LABOUR  IN  IRISH 
HISTORY 


BY 

JAMES  CONNOLLY 


1919 
THE  DONNELLY  PRESS 

164  EAST  37TH  STREET 

NEW  YORK 
All  Rights  Reserved 


HP 

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J4 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

FOREWORD     .  5 

CHAPTER    I 
THE  LESSONS  OF  HISTORY      .  ....      13 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  JACOBITES  AND  THE  IRISH  PEOPLE    ....      18 

CHAPTER    III 
PEASANT  REBELLIONS 24 

CHAPTER    IV 
SOCIAL  REVOLTS  AND  POLITICAL  KITES  AND  CROWS     .      29 

CHAPTER    V 
GRATTAN'S    PARLIAMENT 35 

CHAPTER   VI 
CAPITALIST  BETRAYAL  OF  THE  IRISH  VOLUNTEERS        .       39 

CHAPTER   VII 

THE  UNITED  IRISHMEN 52 

CHAPTER   VIII 

UNITED  IRISHMEN  AS  DEMOCRATS  AND  INTERNATION- 
ALISTS        57 

3 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER   IX 


THE  EMMET  CONSPIRACY 


69 


CHAPTER   X 
THE  FIRST  IRISH  SOCIALIST:  A  FORERUNNER  OF  MARX      74 

CHAPTER    XI 
AN  IRISH  UTOPIA  83 

CHAPTER   XII 
A  CHAPTER  OF  HORRORS :  DANIEL  O'CONNELL  AND  THE 

WORKING  CLASS    .  96 

CHAPTER   XIII 

OUR  IRISH  GIRONDINS  SACRIFICE  THE  IRISH  PEAS- 
ANTRY UPON  THE  ALTAR  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY  104 

CHAPTER    XIV 
SOCIALISTIC  TEACHING  OF  YOUNG  IRELANDERS :     THE 

THINKERS  AND  THE  WORKERS        .  .     113 

CHAPTER   XV 

SOME  MORE  IRISH  PIONEERS  OF  THE  SOCIALIST  MOVE- 
MENT .  .  123 

CHAPTER   XVI 

THE  WORKING  CLASS:  THE  INHERITORS  OF  THE  IRISH 
IDEALS  OF  THE  PAST— THE  REPOSITORY  OF  THE 
HOPES  OF  THE  FUTURE 


FOREWORD 


IN  her  great  work,  "The  Making  of  Ireland  and  its  Undoing," 
the  only  contribution  to  Irish  history  we  know  of  which  conforms 
to  the  methods  of  modern  historical  science,  the  authoress,  Mrs. 
Stopford  Green,  dealing  with  the  effect  upon  Ireland  of  the 
dispersion  of  the  Irish  race  in  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.  and 
Elizabeth,  and  the  consequent  destruction  of  Gaelic  culture,  and 
rupture  with  Gaelic  tradition  and  law,  says  that  the  Irishmen 
educated  in  schools  abroad  abandoned  or  knew  nothing  of  the  lore 
of  ancient  Erin,  and  had  no  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  the 
Brehon  Code,  nor  with  the  social  order  of  which  it  was  the 
juridical  expression.  She  says  they  "urged  the  theory,  so  antag- 
onistic to  the  immemorial  laiv  of  Ireland,  that  only  from  polluted 
sinks  of  heretics  could  come  the  idea  that  the  people  might  elect 
a  ruler,  and  confer  supreme  authority  on  whomsoever  pleased 
them."  In  other  words  the  new  Irish,  educated  in  foreign 
standards,  had  adopted  as  their  own  the  feudal-capitalist  system 
of  which  England  was  the  exponent  in  Ireland,  and  urged  it  upon 
the  Gaelic  Irish.  As  the  dispersion  of  the  clans,  consummated 
by  Cromwell,  finally  completed  the  ruin  of  Gaelic  Ireland,  all  the 
higher  education  of  Irishmen  thenceforward  ran  in  this  foreign 
groove,  and  was  coloured  with  this  foreign  colouring. 

In  other  words,  the  Gaelic  culture  of  the  Irish  chieftainry 
was  rudely  broken  off  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  the  con- 
tinental Schools  of  European  despots  implanted  in  its  place  in 
the  minds  of  the  Irish  students,  and  sent  them  back  to  Ireland 
to  preach  a  fanatical  belief  in  royal  and  feudal  prerogatives,  as 
foreign  to  the  genius  of  the  Gael  as  was  the  English  ruler  to 
Irish  soil.  What  a  light  this  sheds  upon  Irish  history  of  the 
seventeenth,  eighteenth,  and  nineteenth  centuries!  And  what  a 
commentary  it  is  upon  the  real  origin  of  that  so-called  "Irish 
veneration  for  the  aristocracy,"  of  which  the  bourgeois  charlatans 
of  Irish  literature  write  so  eloquently !  That  veneration  is  seen 


6  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

to  be  as  much  of  an  exotic,  as  much  of  an  importation,  as  the 
aristocratic  caste  it  venerated.     Both  were 

".    .    .     foul  foreign  blossoms 
Blown  hither  to  poison  our  plains." 

But  so  deeply  has  this  insidious  lie  about  the  aristocratic 
tendencies  of  the  Irish  taken  root  in  Irish  thought  that  it  will 
take  a  long  time  to  eradicate  it  from  the  minds  of  the  people,  or 
to  make  the  Irish  realise  that  the  whole  concept  of  orthodox 
Irish  history  for  the  last  200  years  was  a  betrayal  and  abandon- 
ment of  the  best  traditions  of  the  Irish  race.  Yet  such  is 
undoubtedly  the  case.  Let  us  examine  this  a  little  more  closely  I 

Just  as  it  is  true  that  a  stream  cannot  rise  above  its  source, 
so  it  is  true  that  a  national  literature  cannot  rise  above  the  moral 
level  of  the  social  conditions  of  the  people  from  whom  it  derives 
its  inspiration.  If  we  would  understand  the  national  literature 
of  a  people  we  must  study  their  social  and  political  status,  keep- 
ing in  mind  the  fact  that  their  writers  were  a  product  thereof, 
and  that  the  children  of  their  brains  were  conceived  and  brought 
forth  in  certain  historical  conditions.  Ireland  at  the  same  time 
as  she  lost  her  ancient  social  system,  also  lost  her  language  as  the 
vehicle  of  thought  of  those  who  acted  as  her  leaders.  As  a  result 
of  this  twofold  loss  the  nation  suffered  socially,  nationally  and 
intellectually  from  a  prolonged  arrested  development.  During 
the  closing  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  all  the  eighteenth, 
and  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth,  the  Irish  people  were  the 
lowest  helots  in  Europe,  socially  and  politically.  The  Irish 
peasant,  reduced  from  the  position  of  a  free  clansman  owning  his 
tribelands  and  controlling  its  administration  in  common  with 
his  fellows,  was  a  mere  tenant-at-will  subject  to  eviction,  dis- 
honour and  outrage  at  the  hands  of  an  irresponsible  private  pro- 
prietor. Politically  he  was  non-existent,  legally  he  held  no  rights, 
intellectually  he  sank  under  the  weight  of  his  social  abasement, 
and  surrendered  to  the  downward  drag  of  his  poverty.  He  had 
been  conquered,  and  he  suffered  all  the  terrible  consequences  of 
defeat  at  the  hands  of  a  ruling  class  and  nation  who  have  always 
acted  upon  the  old  Roman  maxim  of  "Woe  to  the  vanquished." 

To  add  to  his  humiliation,  those  of  his  name  and  race  who 
had  contrived  to  escape  the  general  ruin,  and  sent  their  children 
to  be  educated  in  foreign  schools,  discovered  with  the  return  of 
those  "wild  geese"  to  their  native  habitat  that  they  who  had  sailed 
for  France,  Italy  or  Spain,  filled  with  hatred  of  the  English 


LABOUR  IN   IRISH  HISTORY  7 

Crown  and  of  the  English  landlord  garrison  in  Ireland,  returned 
as  mere  Catholic  adherents  of  a  pretender  to  the  English  throne, 
using  all  the  prestige  of  their  foreign  schooling  to  discredit  the 
Gaelic  ideas  of  equality  and  democracy,  and  instead  instilling 
into  the  minds  of  the  growing  generation  feudal  ideas  of  the 
divine  right  of  kings  to  rule,  and  of  subjects  to  unquestioningly 
obey.  The  Irish  students  in  the  universities  of  the  Continent 
were  the  first  products  of  a  scheme  which  the  Papacy  still  pursues 
with  its  accustomed  skill  and  persistence — a  persistence  which 
recks  little  of  the  passing  of  centuries — a  scheme  which  looks 
upon  Catholic  Ireland  simply  as  a  tool  to  be  used  for  the  spir- 
itual re-conquest  of  England  to  Catholicity.  In  the"  eighteenth 
century  this  scheme  did  its  deadliest  work  in  Ireland.  It  failed 
ridiculously  to  cause  a  single  Irish  worker  in  town  or  country  to 
strike  a  blow  for  the  Stuart  cause  in  the  years  of  the  Scottish 
Rebellions  in  1715  and  1745,  but  it  prevented  them  from  striking 
any  blows  for  their  own  cause,  or  from  taking  advantage  of  the 
civil  feuds  of  their  enemies.  It  did  more.  It  killed  Gaelic  'Ire- 
land ;  an  Irish-speaking  Catholic  was  of  no  value  as  a  missionary 
of  Catholicism  in  England,  and  an  Irish  peasant  who  treasured 
the  tongue  of  his  fathers  might  also  have  some  reverence  for  the 
principles  of  the  social  polity  and  civilisation  under  which  his 
forefathers  had  lived  and  prospered  for  unnumbered  years.  And 
such  principles  were  even  more  distasteful  to  French,  Spanish  or 
Papal  patrons  of  Irish  schools  of  learning  on  the  Continent  than 
they  were  to  English  monarchs.  Thus  the  poor  Irish  were  not 
only  pariahs  in  the  social  system  of  their  day,  but  they  were  also 
precluded  from  hoping  for  a  revival  of  intellectual  life  through 
the  achievements  of  their  children.  Their  children  were  taught 
to  despise  the  language  and  traditions  of  their  fathers. 

It  was  at  or  during  this  period,  when  the  Irish  peasant  had 
been  crushed  to  the  very  lowest  point,  when  the  most  he  could 
hope  for  was  to  be  pitied  as  animals  are  pitied ;  it  was  during  this 
period  Irish  literature  in  English  was  born.  Such  Irish  literature 
was  not  written  for  Irishmen  as  a  real  Irish  literature  would  be, 
it  was  written  by  Irishmen,  about  Irishmen,  but  for  English  or 
Anglo-Irish  consumption. 

Hence  the  Irishman  in  English  literature  may  be  said  to  have 
been  born  with  an  apology  in  his  mouth.  His  creators  knew 
nothing  of  the  free  and  independent  Irishman  of  Gaelic  Ireland, 
but  they  did  know  the  conquered,  robbed,  slave-driven,  brutalised, 
demoralised  Irishman,  the  product  of  generations  of  landlord 
and  capitalist  rule,  and  him  they  seized  upon,  held  up  to  the  gaze 


8  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

of  the  world,  and  asked  the  nations  to  accept  as  the  true  Irish 
type. 

If  he  crouched  before  a  representative  of  royalty  with  an 
abject  submission  born  of  a  hundred  years  of  political  outlawry 
and  training  in  foreign  ideas,  his  abasement  was  pointed  to  proudly 
as  an  instance  of  the  "ancient  Celtic  fidelity  to  hereditary  mon- 
archs;"  if  with  the  memory  of  perennial  famines,  evictions,  jails, 
hangings,  and  tenancy-at-will  beclouding  his  brain  he  humbled 
himself  before  the  upper  class,  or  attached  himself  like  a  dog 
to  their  personal  fortunes,  his  sycophancy  was  cited  as  a  mani- 
festation of  "ancient  Irish  veneration  for  the  aristocracy,"  and  if 
long-continued  insecurity  of  life  begat  in  him  a  fierce  desire  for 
the  ownership  of  a  piece  of  land  to  safeguard  his  loved  ones 
in  a  system  where  land  was  life,  this  new-born  land-hunger  was 
triumphantly  trumpeted  forth  as  a  proof  of  the  "Irish  attachment 
to  the  principle  of  private  property."  Be  it  understood  we  are 
not  talking  now  of  the  English  slanderers  of  the  Irishman,  but  of 
his  Irish  apologists.  The  English  slanderer  never  did  as  much 
harm  as  did  these  self-constituted  delineators  of  Irish  character- 
istics. The  English  slanderer  lowered  Irishmen  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world,  but  his  Irish  middle  class  teachers  and  writers  lowered 
him  in  his  own  eyes  by  extolling  as  an  Irish  virtue  every  syco- 
phantic vice  begotten  of  generations  of  slavery.  Accordingly,  as 
an  Irishman,  peasant,  labourer,  or  artisan,  banded  himself  with 
his  fellows  to  strike  back  at  their  oppressors  in  defence  of  their 
right  to  live  in  the  land  of  their  fathers,  the  "respectable"  classes 
who  had  imbibed  the  foreign  ideas  publicly  deplored  his  act,  and 
unctuously  ascribed  it  to  the  "evil  effects  of  English  misgovern- 
ment  upon  the  Irish  character ;"  but  when  an  occasional  Irishman, 
abandoning  all  the  traditions  of  his  race,  climbed  up  upon  the 
backs  of  his  fellows  to  wealth  or  position,  his  career  was  held  up 
as  a  sample  of  what  Irishmen  could  do  under  congenial  or  favour- 
able circumstances.  The  seventeenth,  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries  were,  indeed,  the  Via  Dolorosa  of  the  Irish  race.  In 
them  the  Irish  Gael  sank  out  of  sight,  and  in  his  place  the  middle 
class  politicians,  capitalists  and  ecclesiastics  laboured  to  produce 
a  hybrid  Irishman,  assimilating  a  foreign  social  system,  a  foreign 
speech,  and  a  foreign  character.  In  the  effort  to  assimilate  the 
first  two  the  Irish  were  unhappily  too  successful,  so  successful 
that  to-day  the  majority  of  the  Irish  do  not  know  that  their 
fathers  ever  knew  another  system  of  ownership,  and  the  Irish 
Irelanders  are  painfully  grappling  with  their  mother  tongue 
with  the  hesitating  accent  of  a  foreigner.  Fortunately  the  Irish 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH   HISTORY  9 

character  has  proven  too  difficult  to  press  into  respectable  foreign 
moulds,  and  the  recoil  of  that  character  from  the  deadly  embrace 
of  capitalist  English  conventionalism,  as  it  has  already  led  to  a 
revaluation  of  the  speech  of  the  Gael,  will  in  all  probability  also 
lead  to  a  re-study  and  appreciation  of  the  social  system  under 
which  the  Gael  reached  the  highest  point  of  civilisation  and  culture 
in  Europe. 

In  the  re-conversion  of  Ireland  to  the  Gaelic  principle  of 
common  ownership  by  a  people  of  their  sources  of  food  and  main- 
tenance, the  worst  obstacle  to  overcome  will  be  the  opposition 
of  the  men  and  women  who  have  imbibed  their  ideas  of  Irish 
character  and  history  from  Anglo-Irish  literature.  That  litera- 
ture, as  we  have  explained,  was  born  in  the  worst  agonies  of  the 
slavery  of  our  race;  it  bears  all  the  birth-marks  of  such  origin 
upon  it,  but  irony  of  ironies,  these  birth-marks  of  slavery  are 
hailed  by  our  teachers  as  "the  native  characteristics  of  the  Celt." 

One  of  these  slave  birth-marks  is  a  belief  in  the  capitalist 
system  of  society;  the  Irishman  frees  himself  from  such  a  mark 
of  slavery  when  he  realises  the  truth  that  the  capitalist  system 
is  the  more  foreign  thing  in  Ireland. 

Hence  we  have  had  in  Ireland  for  over  250  years  the  remark- 
able phenomenon  of  Irishmen  of  the  upper  and  middle  classes 
urging  upon  the  Irish  toilers  as  a  sacred  national  and  religious 
duty  the  necessity  of  maintaining  a  social  order  against  which 
their  Gaelic  forefathers  had  struggled,  despite  prison  cells,  fam- 
ine, and  the  sword,  for  over  400  years.  Reversing  the  procedure 
of  the  Normans  settled  in  Ireland,  who  were  said  to  have  become 
"more  Irish  than  the  Irish,"  the  Irish  propertied  classes  became 
more  English  than  the  English,  and  so  have  continued  to  our  day. 

Hence  we  believe  that  this  book,  attempting  to  depict  the 
attitude  of  the  dispossessed  masses  of  the  Irish  people  in  the 
great  crisis  of  modern  Irish  history,  may  justly  be  looked  upon 
as  part  of  the  literature  of  the  Gaelic  revival.  As  the  Gaelic 
language,  scorned  by  the  possessing  classes,  sought  and  found 
its  last  fortress  in  the  hearts  and  homes  of  the  "lower  orders," 
to  re-issue  from  thence  in  our  own  time  to  what  the  writer  be- 
lieves to  be  a  greater  and  more  enduring  place  in  civilisation  than 
of  old,  so  in  the  words  of  Thomas  Francis  Meagher,  the  same 
"wretched  cabins  have  been  the  holy  shrines  in  which  the  tra- 
ditions and  the  hopes  of  Ireland  have  been  treasured  and  trans- 
mitted. 

The  apostate  patriotism  of  the  Irish  capitalist  class,  arising 
as  it  does  upon  the  rupture  with  Gaelic  tradition,  will,  of  course. 


10  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

reject  this  conception,  and  saturated  with  foreignism  themselves, 
they  will  continue  to  hurl  the  epithet  of  "foreign  ideas"  against 
the  militant  Irish  democracy.  But  the  present  Celtic  revival  in 
Ireland,  leading  as  it  must  to  a  reconsideration  and  more  analytical 
study  of  the  laws  and  social  structure  of  Ireland  before  the 
English  Invasion,  amongst  its  other  good  results,  will  have  this 
one  also,  that  it  will  confirm  and  establish  the  truth  of  this  con- 
ception. Hitherto  the  study  of  the  social  structure  of  Ireland 
in  the  past  has  been  marred  by  one  great  fault.  For  a  descrip- 
tion and  interpretation  of  Irish  social  life  and  customs  the 
student  depended  entirely  upon  the  description  and  interpretation 
of  men  who  were  entirely  lacking  in  knowledge  of,  and  insight 
into,  the  facts  and  spirit  of  the  things  they  attempted  to  decsribe. 
Imbued  with  the  conception  of  feudalistic  or  capitalistic  social 
order,  the  writers  perpetually  strove  to  explain  Irish  institutions 
in  terms  of  an  order  of  things  to  which  those  institutions  were 
entirely  alien.  Irish  titles,  indicative  of  the  function  in  society 
performed  by  their  bearers,  the  writers  explained  by  what  they 
supposed  were  analogous  titles  in  the  feudal  order  of  England, 
forgetful  of  the  fact  that  as  the  one  form  of  society  was  the 
antithesis  of  the  other,  and  not  its  counterpart,  the  one  set  of 
titles  could  not  possibly  convey  the  same  meaning  as  the  other, 
much  less  be  a  translation. 

Much  the  same  mistake  was  made  in  America  by  the  early 
Spanish  conquistadores  in  attempting  to  describe  the  social  and 
political  systems  of  Mexico  and  Peru,  with  much  the  same  results 
of  introducing  almost  endless  confusion  into  every  attempt  to 
comprehend  life  as  it  actually  existed  in  those  countries  before 
the  conquest.  The  Spanish  writers  could  not  mentally  raise 
themselves  out  of  the  social  structure  of  continental  Europe,  and 
hence  their  weird  and  wonderful  tales  of  despotic  Peruvian  and 
Mexican  "Emperors"  and  "Nobles"  where  really  existed  the 
elaborately  organised  family  system  of  a  people  not  yet  fully 
evolved  into  the  political  state.  Not  until  the  publication  of 
Morgan's  monumental  work  on  "Ancient  Society"  was  the  key 
to  the  study  of  American  native  civilisation  really  found  and 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  student.  The  same  key  will  yet 
unlock  the  doors  which  guard  the  secrets  of  our  native  Celtic 
civilisation,  and  make  them  possible  of  fuller  comprehension  for 
the  multitude. 

Meanwhile  we  desire  to  place  before  our  readers  the  two 
propositions  upon  which  this  book  is  founded — propositions 
which  we  believe  embody  alike  the  fruits  of  the  experience  of  the 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  11 

past  and  the  matured  thought  of  the  present  upon  the  points 
under  consideration. 

First,  that  in  the  evolution  of  civilisation  the  progress  of 
the  fight  for  national  liberty  of  any  subject  nation  must,  perforce, 
keep  pace  with  the  progress  of  the  struggle  for  liberty  of  the 
most  subject  class  in  that  nation,  and  that  the  shifting  of  eco- 
nomic and  political  forces  which  accompanies  the  development  of 
the  system  of  capitalist  society  leads  inevitably  to  the  increasing 
conservatism  of  the  non-workingclass  element,  and  to  the  revo- 
lutionary vigour  and  power  of  the  working  class. 

Second,  that  the  result  of  the  long  drawn  out  struggle  of 
Ireland  has  been,  so  far,  that  the  old  chieftainry  has  disappeared, 
or  through  its  degenerate  descendants  has  made  terms  with 
iniquity,  and  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  supporters  of  the 
established  order;  the  middle  class,  growing  up  in  the  midst  of 
the  national  struggle,  and  at  one  time,  as  in  1798,  through  the 
stress  of  the  economic  rivalry  of  England  almost  forced  into  the 
position  of  revolutionary  leaders  against  the  political  despotism 
of  their  industrial  competitors,  have  now  also  bowed  the  knee  to 
Baal,  and  have  a  thousand  economic  strings  in  the  shape  of 
investments  binding  them  to  English  capitalism  as  against  every 
sentimental  or  historic  attachment  drawing  them  toward  Irish 
patriotism ;  only  the  Irish  working  class  remain  as  the  incorrupti- 
ble inheritors  of  the  fight  for  freedom  in  Ireland. 

To  that  unconquered  Irish  working  class  this  book  is  dedi- 
cated by  one  of  their  number. 

JAMES  CONNOLLY. 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  LESSONS  OF  HISTORY. 

"What  is  History  but  a  fable  agreed  upon." 

— Napoleon  I. 

IT  is  in  itself  a  significant  commentary  upon  the  subordinate  place 
allotted  to  labour  in  Irish  politics  that  a  writer  should  think  it 
necessary  to  explain  his  purpose  before  setting  out  to  detail  for 
the  benefit  of  his  readers  the  position  of  the  Irish  workers  in 
the  past,  and  the  lessons  to  be  derived  from  a  study  of  that 
position  in  guiding  the  movement  of  the  working  class  to-day. 
Were  history  what  it  ought  to  be,  an  accurate  literary  reflex 
of  the  times  with  which  it  professes  to  deal,  the  pages  of  history 
would  be  almost  entirely  engrossed  with  a  recital  of  the  wrongs 
and  struggles  of  the  labouring  people,  constituting,  as  they  have 
ever  done,  the  vast  mass  of  mankind.  But  history,  in  general, 
treats  the  working  class  as  the  manipulator  of  politics  treats  the 
working  man — that  is  to  say  with  contempt  when  he  remains 
passive,  and  with  derision,  hatred  and  misrepresentation  when- 
ever he  dares  evince  a  desire  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  political 
or  social  servitude.  Ireland  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Irish 
history  has  ever  been  written  by  the  master  class — in  the  interests 
of  the  master  class. 

Whenever  the  social  question  cropped  up  in  modern  Irish 
history,  whenever  the  question  of  labour  and  its  wrongs  figured 
in  the  writings  or  speeches  of  our  modern  Irish  politicians,  it  was 
simply  that  they  might  be  used  as  weapons  in  the  warfare  against 
a  political  adversary,  and  not  at  all  because  the  person  so  using 
them  was  personally  convinced  that  the  subjection  of  labour  was 
in  itself  a  wrong. 

The   present   series   of   articles   are   intended   primarily   to 

13 


14  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

prove  that  contention.  To  prove  it  by  a  reference  to  the  evidence 
— documentary  and  otherwise — adduced  illustrating  the  state  of 
the  Irish  working  class  in  the  past,  the  almost  total  indifference 
of  our  Irish  politicians  to  the  sufferings  of  the  mass  of  the  people, 
and  the  true  inwardness  of  many  of  the  political  agitations  which 
have  occupied  the  field  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies. Special  attention  is  given  to  the  period  preceding  the 
Union  and  evidence  brought  forward  relative  to  the  state  of 
Ireland  before  and  during  the  continuance  of  Grattan's  Parlia- 
ment; to  the  condition  of  the  working  people  in  town  and  coun- 
try, and  the  attitude  towards  labour  taken  up  by  politicians  of 
all  sides,  whether  patriot  or  ministerialist.  In  other  words,  we 
propose  to  do  what  in  us  lies  to  repair  the  deliberate  neglect  of 
the  social  question  by  our  historians,  and  to  prepare  the  way  in 
order  that  other  and  abler  pens  than  our  own  may  demonstrate 
to  the  reading  public  the  manner  in  which  economic  conditions 
have  controlled  and  dominated  our  Irish  history. 

But  as  a  preliminary  to  this  essay  on  our  part  it  becomes 
necessary  to  recapitulate  here  some  of  the  salient  facts  of  history 
we  have  elsewhere  insisted  upon  as  essential  to  a  thorough  grasp 
of  the  "Irish  Question." 

Politically,  Ireland  has  been  under  the  control  of  England 
for  the  past  700  years,  during  the  greater  part  of  which  time  the 
country  has  been  the  scene  of  constant  wars  against  her  rule 
upon  the  part  of  the  native  Irish.  Until  the  year  1649,  these  wars 
were  complicated  by  the  fact  that  they  were  directed  against  both 
the  political  and  social  order  recognised  by  the  English  invader. 
It  may  surprise  many  readers  to  learn  that  up  to  the  date  above- 
mentioned  the  basis  of  society  in  Ireland,  except  within  the  Pale 
(a  small  strip  of  territory  around  the  Capital  city,  Dublin)  rested 
upon  communal  or  tribal  ownership  of  land.  The  Irish  chief, 
although  recognised  in  the  courts  of  France,  Spain,  and  Rome, 
as  the  peer  of  the  reigning  princes  of  Europe,  in  reality  held  his 
position  upon  the  sufferance  of  his  people,  and  as  an  administrator 
of  the  tribal  affairs  of  his  people,  while  the  land  or  territory  of 
the  clan  was  entirely  removed  from  his  private  jurisdiction.  In 
the  parts  of  Ireland  where  for  400  years  after  the  first  conquest 
(so-called)  the  English  governors  could  not  penetrate  except 
at  the  head  of  a  powerful  army,  the  social  order  which  prevailed 
in  England — feudalism — was  unknown,  and  as  this  comprised  the 
greater  portion  of  the  country,  it  gradually  came  to  be  understood 
that  the  war  against  the  foreign  oppressor  was  also  a  war  against 
private  property  in  land.  But  with  the  forcible  break  up  of  the 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  15 

elan  system  in  1649,  the  social  aspect  of  the  Irish  struggle  sank 
out  of  sight,  its  place  being  usurped  by  the  mere  political  expres- 
sions of  the  fight  for  freedom.  Such  an  event  was,  of  course, 
inevitable  in  any  case.  Communal  ownership  of  land  would, 
undoubtedly,  have  given  way  to  the  privately  owned  system  of 
capitalist-landlordism,  even  if  Ireland  had  remained  an  independ- 
ent country,  but  coming  as  it  did  in  obedience  to  the  pressure  of 
armed  force  from  without,  instead  of  by  the  operation  of  eco- 
nomic forces  within,  the  change  has  been  bitterly  and  justly 
resented  by  the  vast  mass  of  the  Irish  people,  many  of  whom  still 
mix  with  their  dreams  of  liberty  longings  for  a  return  to  the 
ancient  system  of  land  tenure — now  organically  impossible.  The 
dispersion  of  the  clans,  of  course,  put  an  end  to  the  leadership 
of  the  chiefs,  and  in  consequence,  the  Irish  aristocracy  being  all 
of  foreign  or  traitor  origin,  Irish  patriotic  movements  fell  entirely 
into  the  hands  of  the  middle  class,  and  became,  for  the  most  part, 
simply  idealised  expressions  of  middle  class  interest. 

Hence  the  spokesmen  of  the  middle  class,  in  the  Press  and 
on  the  platform,  have  consistently  sought  the  emasculation  of  the 
Irish  National  movement,  the  distortion  of  Irish  history,  and, 
above  all,  the  denial  of  all  relation  between  the  social  rights 
of  the  Irish  toilers  and  the  political  rights  of  the  Irish  nation. 
It  was  hoped  and  intended  by  this  means  to  create  what  is  termed 
"a  real  National  movement" — i.e.,  a  movement  in  which  each 
class  would  recognise  the  rights  of  the  other  classes  and  laying 
aside  their  contentions  would  unite  in  a  national  struggle  against 
the  common  enemy — England.  Needless  to  say,  the  only  class 
deceived  by  such  phrases  was  the  working  class.  When  ques- 
tions of  "class"  interests  are  eliminated  from  public  controversy 
a  victory  is  thereby  gained  for  the  possessing,  conservative  class, 
whose  only  hope  of  security  lies  in  such  elimination.  Like  a 
fraudulent  trustee,  the  bourgeois  dreads  nothing  so  much  as  an 
impartial  and  rigid  inquiry  into  the  validity  of  his  title  deeds. 
Hence  the  bourgeois  press  and  politicians  incessantly  strive  to 
inflame  the  working  class  mind  to  fever  heat  upon  questions  out- 
side the  range  of  their  own  class  interests.  War,  religion,  race, 
language,  political  reform,  patriotism — apart  from  whatever  in- 
trinsic merits  they  may  posses — all  serve  in  the  hands  of  the 
possessing  class  as  counter-irritants,  whose  function  it  is  to  avert 
the  catastrophe  of  social  revolution  by  engendering  heat  in  such 
parts  of  the  body  politic  as  are  farthest  removed  from  the  seat  of 
economic  enquiry,  and  consequently  of  class  consciousness  on 
the  part  of  the  proletariat.  The  bourgeois  Irishman  has  long 


16 

been  an  adept  at  such  manoeuvring,  and  has,  it  must  be  confessed, 
found  in  his  working  class  countrymen  exceedingly  pliable  ma- 
terial. During  the  last  hundred  years  every  generation  in  Ireland 
has  witnessed  an  attempted  rebellion  against  English  rule.  Every 
such  conspiracy  or  rebellion  has  drawn  the  majority  of  its  adher- 
ents from  the  lower  orders  in  town  and  country,  yet  under  the 
inspiration  of  a  few  middle  class  doctrinaires  the  social  question 
has  been  rigorously  excluded  from  the  field  of  action  to  be 
covered  by  the  rebellion  if  successful;  in  hopes  that  by  such 
exclusion  it  would  be  possible  to  conciliate  the  upper  classes 
and  enlist  them  in  the  struggle  for  freedom.  The  result  has  in 
nearly  every  case  been  the  same.  The  workers,  though  furnish- 
ing the  greatest  proportion  of  recruits  to  the  ranks  of  the  revolu- 
tionists, and  consequently  of  victims  to  the  prison  and  the  scaf- 
fold, could  not  be  imbued  en  masse  with  the  revolutionary  fire 
necessary  to  seriously  imperil  a  dominion  rooted  for  700  years 
in  the  heart  of  their  country.  They  were  all  anxious  enough  for 
freedom,  but  realising  the  enormous  odds  against  them,  and 
being  explicitly  told  by  their  leaders  that  they  must  not  expect  any 
change  in  their  condition  of  social  subjection,  even  if  successful, 
they  as  a  body  shrank  from  the  contest,  and  left  only  the  purest 
minded  and  most  chivalrous  of  their  class  to  face  the  odds  and 
glut  the  vengeance  of  the  tyrant — a  warning  to  those  in  all  coun- 
tries who  neglect  the  vital  truth  that  successful  revolutions  are 
not  the  product  of  our  brains,  but  of  ripe  material  conditions. 

The  upper  class  also  turned  a  contemptuously  deaf  ear  to 
the  charming  of  the  bourgeois  patriot.  They  (the  upper  class) 
naturally  clung  to  their  property,  landed  and  otherwise ;  under 
the  protecting  power  of  England  they  felt  themselves  secure  in 
the  possession  thereof,  but  were  by  no  means  assured  as  to  the 
fate  which  might  befall  it  in  a  successful  revolutionary  uprising. 
The  landlord  class,  therefore,  remained  resolutely  loyal  to  Eng- 
land, and  while  the  middle  class  poets  and  romancists  were 
enthusing  on  the  hope  of  a  "union  of  class  and  creeds,"  the  aris- 
tocracy were  pursuing  their  private  interest  against  their  tenants 
with  a  relentlessness  which  threatened  to  depopulate  the  country, 
and  led  even  an  English  Conservative  newspaper,  the  London 
Times,  to  declare  that  "the  name  of  an  Irish  landlord  stinks  in 
the  nostrils  of  Christendom." 

It  is  well  to  remember,  as  a  warning  against  similar  foolish- 
ness in  future,  that  the  generation  of  Irish  landlords  which  had 
listened  to  the  eloquent  pleadings  of  Thomas  Davis  was  the  same 
as  that  which  in  the  Famine  years  "exercised  its  rights  with  a  rod 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH   HISTORY  V 

of  iron  and  renounced  its  duties  with  a  front  of  brass." 

The  lower  middle  class  gave  to  the  National  cause  in  the 
past  many  unselfish  patriots,  but,  on  the  whole,  while  willing  and 
ready  enough  to  please  their  humble  fellow-countrymen,  and  to 
compound  with  their  own  conscience  by  shouting  louder  than 
all  others  their  untiring  devotion  to  the  cause  of  freedom,  they, 
as  a  class,  unceasingly  strove  to  divert  the  public  mind  upon  the 
lines  of  constitutional  agitation  for  such  reforms  as  might  remove 
irritating  and  unnecessary  officialism,  while  leaving  untouched 
the  basis  of  national  and  economic  subjection.  This  policy 
enables  them  to  masquerade  as  patriots  before  the  unthinking 
multitude,  and  at  the  same  time  lends  greater  force  to  their 
words  when  as  "patriot  leaders"  they  cry  down  any  serious 
revolutionary  movement  that  might  demand  from  them  greater 
proofs  of  sincerity  than  can  be  furnished  by  the  strength  of 
their  lungs,  or  greater  sacrifices  than  would  be  suitable  to  their 
exchequer.  '48  and  '67,  the  Young  Ireland  and  the  Fenian 
Movements,  furnish  the  classic  illustrations  of  this  policy  on 
the  part  of  the  Irish  middle  class. 

Such,  then,  is  our  view  of  Irish  politics  and  Irish  history. 
Subsequent  chapters  will  place  before  our  readers  the  facts  upon 
which  such  a  view  is  based. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  JACOBITES  AND  THE  IRISH  PEOPLE 

"If  ever  there  was  a  time  when  it  behooved  men  in  public  stations  to 
be  explicit,  if  ever  there  was  a  time  when  those  scourges  of  the  human 
race  called  politicians  should  lay  aside  their  duplicity  and  finesse,  it  is 
the  present  moment.  Be  assured  that  the  people  of  this  country  will  no 
longer  bear  that  their  welfare  should  be  the  sport  of  a  few  family  factions ; 
be  assured  they  are  convinced  their  true  interest  consists  in  putting  down 
men  of  self  creation,  who  have  no  object  in  view  but  that  of  aggrandising 
themselves  and  their  families  at  the  expense  of  the  public,  and  in  setting 
up  men  who  shall  represent  the  nation,  who  shall  be  accountable  to  the 
nation,  and  who  shall  do  the  business  of  the  nation." — Arthur  O'Connor 
in  Irish  House  of  Commons,  May  4,  1795. 

Modern  Irish  History  properly  understood  may  be  said  to 
start  with  the  close  of  the  Williamite  Wars  in  the  year  1691.  All 
the  political  life  of  Ireland  during  the  next  200  years  draws  its 
colouring  from,  and  can  only  be  understood  in  the  light  of  that 
conflict  between  King  James  of  England  and  the  claimant  for 
his  throne,  William,  Prince  of  Orange.  Our  Irish  politics  even 
to  this  day  and  generation  have  been  and  are  largely  determined 
by  the  light  in  which  the  different  sections  of  the  Irish  people 
regarded  the  prolonged  conflict  which  closed  with  the  surrender 
of  Sarsfield  and  the  garrison  of  Limerick  to  the  investing  forces 
of  the  Williamite  party.  Yet  never  in  all  the  history  of  Ireland 
has  there  been  a  war  in  which  the  people  of  Ireland  had  less 
reason  to  be  interested  either  on  one  side  or  the  other.  It  is 
unfortunately  beyond  all  question  that  the  Irish  Catholics  of 
that  time  did  fight  for  King  James  like  lions.  It  is  beyond  all 
question  that  the  Irish  Catholics  shed  their  blood  like  water 
and  wasted  their  wealth  like  dirt  in  an  effort  to  retain  King 
James  upon  the  throne.  But  it  is  equally  beyond  all  question 
that  the  whole  struggle  was  no  earthly  concern  of  theirs;  that 
King  James  was  one  of  the  most  worthless  representatives  of  a 
worthless  race  that  ever  sat  upon  a  throne;  that  the  "pious  glo- 

18 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  19 

rious  and  immortal"  William  was  a  mere  adventurer  fighting 
for  his  own  hand,  and  his  army  recruited  from  the  impecunious 
swordsmen  of  Europe  who  cared  as  little  for  Protestantism  as 
they  did  for  human  life ;  and  that  neither  army  had  the  slightest 
claim  to  be  considered  as  a  patriot  army  combating  for  the 
freedom  of  the  Irish  race.  So  far  from  the  paeans  of  praise 
lavished  upon  Sarsfield  and  the  Jacobite  army  being  justified, 
it  is  questionable  whether  a  more  enlightened  or  patriotic  age 
than  our  own  will  not  condemn  them  as  little  better  than  traitors 
for  their  action  in  seducing  the  Irish  people  from  their  allegiance 
to  the  cause  of  their  country's  freedom  to  plunge  them  into  a 
war  on  behalf  of  a  foreign  tyrant — a  tyrant  who,  even  in  the 
midst  of  their  struggles  on  his  behalf,  opposed  the  Dublin  Parlia- 
ment in  its  efforts  to  annul  the  supremacy  of  the  English  Parlia- 
ment. The  war  between  William  and  James  offered  a  splendid 
opportunity  to  the  subject  people  of  Ireland  to  make  a  bid  for 
freedom  while  the  forces  of  their  oppressors  were  rent  in  civil 
war.  The  opportunity  was  cast  aside,  and  the  subject  people 
took  sides  on  behalf  of  the  opposing  factions  of  their  enemies. 
The  reason  is  not  hard  to  find.  The  Catholic  gentlemen  and 
nobles  who  had  the  leadership  of  the  people  of  Ireland  at  the 
time  were,  one  and  all,  men  who  possessed  considerable  property 
in  the  country,  property  to  which  they  had,  notwithstanding  their 
Catholicity,  no  more  right  or  title  than  the  merest  Cromwellian 
or  Williamite  adventurer.  The  lands  they  held  were  lands  which 
in  former  times  belonged  to  the  Irish  people — in  other  words, 
they  were  tribe-lands.  As  such,  the  peasantry — then  reduced  to 
the  position  of  mere  tenants  at  will — were  the  rightful  owners 
of  the  soil,  whilst  the  Jacobite  chivalry  of  King  James  were 
either  the  descendants  of  men  who  had  obtained  their  property 
in  some  former  confiscation  as  the  spoils  of  conquest;  of  men 
who  had  taken  sides  with  the  oppressor  against  their  own  coun- 
trymen and  were  allowed  to  retain  their  property  as  the  fruits 
of  treason;  or  finally,  of  men  who  had  consented  to  seek  from 
the  English  Government  for  a  grant  giving  them  a  personal 
title  to  the  lands  of  their  clansmen.  From  such  a  combination 
no  really  national  action  could  be  expected,  and  from  first  to 
last  of  their  public  proceedings  they  acted  as  an  English  faction, 
and  as  an  English  faction  only.  In  whatever  point  they  might 
disagree  with  the  Williamites,  they  were  at  least  in  perfect  accord 
with  them  on  one  point — viz.,  that  the  Irish  people  should  be 
a  subject  people ;  and  it  will  be  readily  understood  that  even  had 
the  war  ended  in  the  complete  defeat  of  William  and  the  triumph 


20  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

of  James,  the  lot  of  the  Irish,  whether  as  tillers  of  the  soil  or 
as  a  nation,  would  not  have  been  substantially  improved.  The 
undeniable  patriotism  of  the  rank  and  file  does  not  alter  the 
truthfulness  of  this  analysis  of  the  situation.  They  saw  only 
the  new  enemy  from  England,  the  old  English  enemy  settled  in 
Ireland  they  were  generously,  but  foolishly,  ready  to  credit  with 
all  the  virtues  and  attributes  of  patriotic  Irishmen. 

To  further  illustrate  our  point  regarding  the  character  of 
the  Jacobite  leaders  in  Ireland  we  might  adduce  the  result  of 
the  great  land  settlement  of  Ireland  in  1675.  Eleven  million 
acres  had  been  surveyed  at  that  time,  of  which  four  million  acres 
were  in  the  possession  of  Protestant  settlers  as  the  result  of 
previous  confiscations. 

Lands  so  held  were  never  disturbed,  but  the  remainder 
were  distributed  as  follows: — 

Acres 

To  soldiers  who  had  served  in  the  Irish  wars 2,367,715 

To  49  officers 497,001 

To  adventurers  (who  had  lent  money) 707,321 

To  provisors  (to  whom  land  had  been  promised) 477,873 

To  Duke  of  Ormond  and  Colonel  Butler 257,518 

To  Duke  of  York 169,436 

To  Protestant  Bishops 31,526 

The  lands  left  to  the  Catholics  were  distributed  among  the 
Catholic  "gentlemen"  as  follows : 

Acres 
To  those  who  were  declared  "innocent" — that  is  to  say, 

those  who  had  not  fought  for  freedom,  but  had 

sided  with  the  Government 1,176,570 

To  provisors  (land  promised) 497,001 

Nominees  in  possession 68,260 

Restitutions   55,396 

To  those  transferred  to  Connaught,  under  James  I. ...      541,330 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  lands 
held  in  Connaught,  all  the  lands  held  by  the  Catholic  gentry 
throughout  Ireland  were  lands  gained  in  the  manner  we  have 
before  described — as  the  spoils  of  conquest  or  the  fruits  of 
treachery.  Even  in  that  province  the  lands  of  the  gentry  were 
held  under  a  feudal  tenure  from  the  English  Crown,  and  there- 
fore their  owners  had  entered  into  a  direct  agreement  with  the 
invader  to  set  aside  the  rights  of  the  clan  community  in  favour 
of  their  own  personal  claims.  Here  then  was  the  real  reason 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  21 

for  the  refusal  of  the  Irish  leaders  of  that  time  to  raise  the 
standard  of  the  Irish  nation  instead  of  the  banner  of  an  English 
faction.  They  fought,  not  for  freedom  for  Ireland,  nor  for  the 
restitution  of  their  rights  to  the  Irish  people,  but  rather  to  secure 
that  the  class  who  then  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  robbing  the  Irish 
people  should  not  be  compelled  to  give  way  in  their  turn  to  a  fresh 
horde  of  land  thieves.  Much  has  been  made  of  their  attempts 
to  repeal  Poyning's  Law*  and  in  other  ways  to  give  greater  legis- 
lative force  to  the  resolutions  of  the  Dublin  Parliament,  as  if  such 
acts  were  a  proof  of  their  sincere  desire  to  free  the  country,  and 
not  merely  to  make  certain  their  own  tenure  of  power.  But  such 
claims  on  the  part  of  some  writers  are  only  another  proof  of  the 
difficulty  of  comprehending  historical  occurrences  without  having 
some  central  principle  to  guide  and  direct  in  the  task. 

For  the  benefit  of  our  readers  we  may  here  set  forth  the 
Socialist  key  to  the  pages  of  history  in  order  that  it  may  be  the 
more  readily  understood  why  in  the  past  the  governing  classes 
have  ever  and  always  aimed  at  the  conquest  of  political  power  as 
the  guarantee  for  their  economic  domination — or,  to  put  it  more 
plainly,  for  the  social  subjection  of  the  masses — and  why  the 
freedom  of  the  workers,  even  in  a  political  sense,  must  be  incom- 
plete and  insecure  until  they  wrest  from  the  governing  classes  the 
possession  of  the  land  and  instruments  of  wealth  production. 
This  proposition,  or  key  to  history,  as  set  forth  by  Karl  Marx,  the 
greatest  of  modern  thinkers  and  first  of  scientific  Socialists,  is  as 
follows : — 

"That  in  every  historical  epoch  the  prevailing  method  of 
economic  production  and  exchange,  and  the  social  organisation 
necessarily  following  from  it,  forms  the  basis  upon  which  alone 
can  be  explained  the  political  and  intellectual  history  of  that 
epoch." 

In  Ireland  at  the  time  of  the  Williamite  war  the  "prevailing 
method  of  economic  production  and  exchange"  was  the  feudal 
method  based  upon  the  private  ownership  of  lands  stolen  from  the 
Irish  people,  and  all  the  political  struggles  of  the  period  were 
built  upon  the  material  interests  of  one  set  of  usurpers  who  wished 
to  retain,  and  another  set  who  wished  to  obtain,  the  mastery  of 
those  lands — in  other  words,  the  application  of  such  a  key  as  the 
above  to  the  problem  furnished  by  the  Jacobite  Parliament  of 
King  James  at  once  explains  the  reason  of  the  so-called  patriotic 
efforts  of  the  Catholic  gentry.  Their  efforts  were  directed  to  the 

*  Poyning's  Law  made  the  Dublin  Parliament  subordinate  to  the  Parlia- 
ment in  London. 


22  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

conservation  of  their  own  rights  of  property,  as  against  the  right 
of  the  English  Parliament  to  interfere  with  or  regulate  such  rights. 
The  so-called  Patriot  Parliament  was  in  reality,  like  every  oth 
Parliament  that  ever  sat  in  Dublin,  merely  a  collection  of  land 
thieves  and  their  lackeys ;  their  patriotism  consisted  in  an  eft 
to  retain  for  themselves  the  spoils  of  the  native  peasantry;  the 
English  influence  against  which  they  protested  was  the  influence 
of  their  fellow-thieves  in  England  hungry  for  a  share  of  the  spoil  ; 
and  Sarsfield  and  his  followers  did  not  become  Irish  patriots 
because  of  their  fight  against  King  William's  government  any 
more  than  an  Irish  Whig  out  of  office  becomes  a  patriot  because 
of  his  hatred  to  the  Tories  who  are  in.    The  forces  which  battled 
beneath  the  walls  of  Derry  or  Limerick  were  not  the  forces  of 
England  and  Ireland,  but  were  the  forces  of  two  English  political 
parties  fighting  for  the  possession  of  the  powers  of  government; 
and  the  leaders  of  the  Irish  Wild  Geese  on  the  battlefields  of 
Europe  were  not  shedding  their  blood  because  of  their  fidelity  to 
Ireland,  as  our  historians  pretend  to  believe,  but  because  they  had 
attached  themselves  to  the  defeated  side  in  English  politics.    This 
fact  was  fully  illustrated  by  the  action  of  the  old  Franco-Irish 
at  the  time  of  the  Frnech  Revolution.    They  in  a  body  volunteered 
into  the  English  army  to  help  to  put  down  the  new  French  Repub- 
lic, and  as  a  result  Europe  witnessed  the  spectacle  of  the  new 
republican  Irish  exiles  fighting  for  the  French  Revolution,  and  the 
sons  of  the  old  aristocratic  Irish  exiles  fighting  under  the  banner 
of  England  to  put  down  that  Revolution.    It  is  time  we  learned 
to  appreciate  and  value  the  truth  upon  such  matters,  and  to  brush 
from  our  eyes  the  cobwebs  woven  across  them  by  our  ignorant  or 
unscrupulous  history-writing  politicians. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  just  as  necessary  to  remember  that 
King  William,  when  he  had  finally  subdued  his  enemies  in 
Ireland,  showed  by  his  actions  that  he  and  his  followers  were  ani- 
mated throughout  by  the  same  class  feeling  and  considerations 
as  their  opponents.  When  the  war  was  over  William  confiscated 
a  million  and  a  half  acres,  and  distributed  them  among  the  aristo- 
cratic plunderers  who  followed  him  as  follows : — 

He  gave  Lord  Bentinck,  135,300  acres;  Lord  Albemarle, 
103,603;  Lord  Conningsby,  59,667;  Lord  Romney,  49,517;  Lord 
Galway,  36,142;  Lord  Athlone,  26,840;  Lord  Rochford,  49,512; 
Dr.  Leslie,  16,000;  Mr.  F.  Keighley,  12,000;  Lord  Mountjoy, 
12,000;  Sir  T.  Prendergast,  7,083;  Colonel  Hamilton,  5,886  acres. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  men  whose  descendants  some  presuma- 
bly sane  Irishmen  imagine  will  be  converted  into  "nationalists"  by 


LABOUR  IN   IRISH  HISTORY  23 

preaching  "a  union  of  classes." 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  also,  if  only  as  a  proof  of  his  reli- 
gious sincerity,  that  King  William  bestowed  95,000  acres,  plun- 
dered from  the  Irish  people,  upon  his  paramour,  Elizabeth  Villiers, 
Countess  of  Orkney.  But  the  virtuous  Irish  Parliament  inter- 
fered, took  back  the  land,  and  distributed  it  amongst  their  im- 
mediate friends,  the  Irish  Loyalist  adventurers. 


CHAPTER  III 
PEASANT  REBELLIONS. 

"To  permit  a  small  class,  whether  alien  or  native,  to  obtain  a  monopoly 
of  the  land  is  an  intolerable  injustice;  its  continued  enforcement  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  a  robbery  of  the  hard  and  laborious  earnings  of  the 
p00r." — Irish  People  (Organ  of  the  Fenian  Brotherhood),  July  30,  1864. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  pointed  out  that  the  Williamite 
war  in  Ireland,  from  Derry  to  Limerick,  was  primarily  a  war 
for  mastery  over  the  Irish  people,  and  that  all  questions  of 
national  or  industrial  freedom  were  ignored  by  the  leaders  on 
both  sides  as  being  presumably  what  their  modern  prototypes 
would  style  "beyond  the  pale  of  practical  politics." 

When  the  nation  had  once  more  settled  down  to  the  pur- 
suits of  peace,  and  all  fear  of  a  Catholic  or  Jacobite  rising  had 
departed  from  the  minds  of  even  the  most  timorous  squireen,  the 
unfortunate  tenantry  of  Ireland,  whether  Catholic  or  Protestant, 
were  enlightened  upon  how  little  difference  the  war  had  made 
to  their  position  as  a  subject  class.  The  Catholic  who  had  been 
so  foolish  as  to  adhere  to  the  army  of  James  could  not,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  expect  much  consideration  from  his  conquerors 
— and  he  received  none — but  he  had  the  consolation  of  seeing 
that  the  rank  and  file  of  his  Protestant  enemies  were  treated 
little,  if  at  all,  better  than  himself.  When  the  hungry  horde  of 
adventurers  who  had  brought  companies  to  the  service  of  Willia/n 
had  glutted  themselves  with  the  plunder  for  which  they  had 
crossed  the  Channel  they  showed  no  more  disposition  to  remem- 
ber the  claims  of  the  common  soldier — by  the  aid  of  whose 
sword  they  had  climbed  to  power — than  do  our  present  rulers 
when  they  consign  to  the  workhouse  the  shattered  frames  of  the 
poor  fools  who,  with  murder  and  pillage,  have  won  for  their 
masters  empire  in  India  or  Africa. 

Before  long  the  Protestant  and  Catholic  tenants  were  suf- 
fering one  common  oppression.  The  question  of  political  su- 

24 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  25 

premacy  having  been  finally  decided,  the  yoke  of  economic 
slavery  was  now  laid  unsparingly  upon  the  backs  of  the  labouring 
people.  All  religious  sects  suffered  equally  from  this  cause.  The 
Penal  Laws  then  in  operation  against  the  Catholics  did  indeed 
make  the  life  of  propertied  Catholics  more  insecure  than  would 
otherwise  have  been  the  case;  but  to  the  vast  mass  of  the  popu- 
lation the  misery  and  hardship  entailed  by  the  working  out  of 
economic  laws  were  fraught  with  infinitely  more  suffering  than 
it  was  at  any  time  within  the  power  of  the  Penal  Laws  to  inflict. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  effect  of  the  latter  code  in  impoverishing 
wealthy  Catholics  has  been  much  overrated.  The  class  interests 
which  at  all  times  unite  the  propertied  section  of  the  community 
operated,  to  a  large  extent,  to  render  impossible  the  application 
of  the  power  of  persecution  to  its  full  legal  limits.  Rich  Catholics 
were  quietly  tolerated,  and  generally  received  from  the  rich 
Protestants  an  amount  of  respect  and  forbearance  which  the 
latter  would  not  at  any  time  extend  to  their  Protestant  tenantry 
or  work-people.  So  far  was  this  true  that,  like  the  Jew,  some 
Catholics  became  notorious  as  moneylenders,  and  in  the  year  1763 
a  bill  was  introduced  into  the  Irish  House  of  Commons  to  give 
greater  facilities  to  Protestants  wishing  to  borrow  money  from 
Catholics.  The  bill  proposed  to  enable  Catholics  to  become 
mortgages  of  landed  estates  in  order  that  Protestants  wishing 
to  borrow  money  could  give  a  mortgage  upon  their  lands  as  se- 
curity to  the  Catholic  lender.  The  bill  was  defeated,  but  its  in- 
troduction serves  to  show  how  little  the  Penal  Laws  had  oper- 
ated to  prevent  the  accumulation  of  wealth  by  the  Catholic 
propertied  classes. 

But  the  social  system  thus  firmly  rooted  in  the  soil  of  Ireland 
— and  accepted  as  righteous  by  the  ruling  class  irrespective  of 
religion — was  a  greater  enemy  to  the  prosperity  and  happiness 
of  the  people  than  any  legislation  religious  bigotry  could  devise. 
Modern  Irish  politicians,  inspired  either  by  a  blissful  unconscious- 
ness of  the  facts  of  history,  or  else  sublimely  indifferent  to  its 
teaching,  are  in  the  habit  of  tracing  the  misery  of  Ireland  to  the 
Legislative  Union  as  its  source,  but  the  slightest  possible  ac- 
quaintance with  ante-Union  literature  will  reveal  a  record  of 
famine,  oppression,  and  injustice,  due  to  economic  causes,  unsur- 
passed at  any  other  stage  of  modern  Irish  history.  Thus  Dean 
Swift,  writing  in  1729,  in  that  masterpiece  of  sarcasm  entitled 
"A  Modest  Proposal  for  Preventing  the  Children  of  the  Poor 
People  in  Ireland  from  becoming  a  Burden  on  their  Parents  or 
Country,  and  for  making  them  Beneficial  to  the  Public,"  was  so 


36  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

moved  by  the  spectacle  of  poverty  and  wretchedness  that,  al- 
though having  no  love  for  the  people,  for  whom,  indeed,  he  had 
no  better  name  than  "the  savage  old  Irish,"  he  produced  the 
most  vehement  and  bitter  indictment  of  the  society  of  his  day — 
and  the  most  striking  picture  of  hopeless  despair — literature 
has  yet  revealed.  Here  is  in  effect  his  "Proposal" : 

"It  is  a  melancholy  object  to  those  who  walk  through  this 
great  town,  or  travel  in  the  country,  when  they  see  the  streets, 
the  roads,  and  cabin  doors  crowded  with  beggars  of  the  female 
sex,  followed  by  three,  four,  or  six  children,  all  in  rags,  and 
importuning  every  passenger  for  an  alms.  ...  I  do,  therefore, 
offer  it  to  public  consideration  that  of  the  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  children  already  computed,  twenty  thousand  may  be 
reserved  for  breed  .  .  .  that  the  remaining  hundred  thousand 
may  at  a  year  old  be  offered  in  sale  to  the  persons  of  quality 
and  fortune  through  the  kingdom,  always  advising  the  mother 
to  let  them  suck  plentifully  in  the  last  month  so  as  to  render 
them  plump  and  fat  for  a  good  table.  A  child  will  make  two 
dishes  at  an  entertainment  for  friends,  and  when  the  family  dines 
alone  the  fore  or  hind  quarters  will  make  a  reasonable  dish ;  and 
seasoned  with  a  little  pepper  or  salt,  will  be  very  good  boiled  on 
the  fourth  day,  especially  in  winter.  ...  I  have  already  com- 
puted the  charge  of  nursing  a  beggar's  child  (in  which  list  I 
reckon  all  cottagers,  labourers,  and  four-fifths  of  the  farmers), 
to  be  about  two  shillings  per  annum,  rags  included;  and  I  be- 
lieve no  gentleman  would  refuse  to  give  ten  shillings  for  the 
carcase  of  a  good,  fat  child,  which,  as  I  have  said,  will  make 
four  dishes  of  excellent,  nutritious  meat." 

Sarcasm,  truly,  but  how  terrible  must  have  been  the  misery 
which  made  even  such  sarcasm  permissible !  Great  as  it  undoubt- 
edly was,  it  was  surpassed  twelve  years  later  in  the  famine  of 
1740,  when  no  less  a  number  than  400,000  are  estimated  to  have 
perished  of  hunger  or  of  the  diseases  which  follow  in  the  wake 
of  hunger.  This  may  seem  an  exaggeration,  but  the  statement 
is  amply  borne  out  by  contemporary  evidence.  Thus  Bishop 
Berkeley,  of  the  Anglican  Church,  writing  to  a  Mr.  Thomas 
Prior,  of  Dublin,  in  1741,  mentions  that  "The  other  day  I  heard 
one  from  the  county  of  Limerick  say  that  whole  villages  were 
entirely  dispeopled.  About  two  months  since  I  heard  Sir  Richard 
Cox  say  that  five  hundred  were  dead  in  the  parish,  though  in  a 
country,  I  believe,  not  very  populous."  And  a  pamphlet  entitled, 
"The  Groans  of  Ireland,"  published  in  1741,  asserts,  "The  uni- 
versal scarcity  was  followed  by  fluxes  and  malignant  fevers, 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  27 

which  swept  off  multitudes  of  all  sorts,  so  that  whole  villages 
were  laid  waste." 

This  famine,  be  it  remarked,  like  all  modern  famine,  was 
solely  attributable  to  economic  causes;  the  poor  of  all  religions 
and  politics  were  equally  sufferers;  the  rich  of  all  religions  and 
politics  were  equally  exempt.  It  is  also  noteworthy,  as  illustrat- 
ing the  manner  in  which  the  hireling  scribes  of  the  propertied 
classes  have  written  history,  that  while  a  voluminous  literature 
has  arisen  round  the  Penal  Laws — a  subject  of  merely  posthu- 
mous interest — a  matter  of  such  overwhelming  importance,  both 
historically  and  practically,  as  the  predisposing  causes  of  Irish 
famine  can,  as  yet,  claim  no  notice  except  scanty  and  unavoidable 
references  in  national  history. 

The  country  had  not  recovered  from  the  direful  effects  of 
this  famine  when  a  further  economic  development  once  more 
plunged  the  inhabitants  into  the  blackest  despair.  Disease  having 
attacked  and  destroyed  great  quantities  of  cattle  in  England, 
the  aristocratic  rulers  of  that  country — fearful  lest  the  ensuing 
high  price  of  meat  should  lead  to  a  demand  for  higher  wages 
on  the  part  of  the  working  class  in  England — removed  the  em- 
bargo off  Irish  cattle,  meat,  butter  and  cheese  at  the  English 
ports,  thus  partly  establishing  free  trade  in  those  articles  between 
the  two  countries.  The  immediate  result  was  that  all  such  pro- 
visions brought  such  a  price  in  England  that  tillage  farming  in 
Ireland  became  unprofitable  by  comparison,  and  every  effort  was 
accordingly  made  to  transform  arable  land  into  sheep-walks  or 
grazing  lands.  The  landlord  class  commenced  evicting  their 
tenants;  breaking  up  small  farms,  and  even  seizing  upon  village 
common  lands  and  pasture  grounds  all  over  the  country  with  the 
most  disastrous  results  to  the  labouring  people  and  cottiers  gen- 
erally. Where  a  hundred  families  had  reaped  a  sustenance  from 
their  small  farms,  or  by  hiring  out  their  labour  to  the  owners  of 
large  farms,  a  dozen  shepherds  now  occupied  their  places.  Im- 
mediately there  sprang  up  throughout  Ireland  numbers  of  secret 
societies  in  which  the  dispossessed  people  strove  by  lawless  acts 
and  violent  methods  to  restrain  the  greed  of  their  masters,  and 
to  enforce  their  own  right  to  life.  They  met  in  large  bodies, 
generally  at  midnight,  and  proceeded  to  tear  down  enclosures; 
to  hough  cattle ;  to  dig  up  and  so  render  useless  the  pasture  lands ; 
to  burn  the  houses  of  shepherds;  and  in  short,  to  terrorise  their 
social  rulers  into  abandoning  the  policy  of  grazing  in  favour  of 
tillage,  and  to  give  more  employment  to  the  labourers  and  more 
security  to  the  cottier.  These  secret  organisations  assumed  dif- 


28  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

ferent  names  and  frequently  adopted  different  methods,  and  it  is 
now  impossible  to  tell  whether  they  possessed  any  coherent  or- 
ganisation or  not.  Throughout  the  South  they  were  called 
Whiteboys,  from  the  practice  of  wearing  white  shirts  over  their 
clothes  when  on  their  nocturnal  expeditions.  About  the  year 
1762  they  posted  their  notices  on  conspicuous  places  in  the  coun- 
try districts — notably,  Cork,  Waterford,  Limerick,  and  Tip- 
perary — threatening  vengeance  against  such  persons  as  had  in- 
curred their  displeasure  as  graziers,  evicting  landlords,  &c. 

These  proclamations  were  signed  by  an  imaginary  female, 
sometimes  called  "Sive  Oultagh"  sometimes  "Queen  Sive,"  some- 
times they  were  in  the  name  of  "Queen  Sive  and  Her  Subjects." 
Government  warred  upon  these  poor  wretches  in  the  most  vindic- 
tive manner;  hanging,  shooting,  transporting  without  mercy; 
raiding  villages  at  dead  of  night  for  suspected  Whiteboys,  and 
dragging  the  poor  creatures  before  magistrates  who  never  con- 
descended to  hear  any  evidence  in  favour  of  the  prisoners,  but 
condemned  them  to  whatever  punishments  their  vindictive  class 
spirit  or  impaired  digestion  might  prompt. 

The  spirit  of  the  ruling  class  against  those  poor  slaves  ir 
revolt  may  be  judged  by  two  incidents  exemplifying  how  Cath- 
olic and  Protestant  proprietors  united  to  fortify  injustice  and 
preserve  their  privileges,  even  at  a  time  when  we  have  been  led 
to  believe  that  the  Penal  Laws  formed  an  insuperable  barrier 
against  such  union.  In  the  year  1762  the  Government  offered 
the  sum  of  £100  for  the  capture  of  the  first  five  Whiteboy  Chiefs. 
The  Protestant  inhabitants  of  the  city  of  Cork  offered  in  addition 
£300  for  the  Chief,  and  £50  for  each  of  his  first  five  accomplices 
arrested.  Immediately  the  wealthy  Catholics  of  the  same  city 
added  to  the  above  sums  a  promise  of  £200  for  the  chief  and  £40 
for  each  of  his  first  five  subordinates.  This  was  at  a  time  when 
an  English  governor,  Lord  Chesterfield,  declared  that  if  the 
military  had  killed  half  as  many  landlords  as  they  did  Whiteboys 
they  would  have  contributed  more  effectually  to  restore  quiet,  a 
remark  which  conveys  some  slight  idea  of  the  carnage  made 
among  the  peasantry.  Yet,  Flood,  the  great  Protestant  "patriot," 
he  of  whom  Davis  sings — 

"Bless  Harry  Flood,  who  nobly  stood 
By  us  through  gloomy  years." 

in  the  Irish  House  of  Commons  of  1763  fiercely  denounced  the 
Government  for  not  killing  enough  of  the  Whiteboys.  He  called 
it  "clemency." 


SOCIAL  REVOLTS  AND  POLITICAL  KITES  AND  CROWS. 

"When  the  aristocracy  come  forward  the  people  fall  backward ;  when 
the  people  come  forward  the  aristocracy,  fearful  of  being  left  behind, 
insinuate  themselves  into  our  ranks  and  rise  into  timid  leaders  or  treacher- 
ous auxiliaries." — Secret  Manifesto  of  Projectors  of  United  Irish  So- 
ciety, 1791. 

In  the  North  of  Ireland  the  secret  organisations  of  the 
peasantry  were  known  variously  as  Oakboys  and  Hearts  of 
Steel  or  Steelboys.  The  former  directed  their  efforts  mainly 
against  the  system  of  compulsory  road  repairing  by  which  they 
were  required  to  contribute  their  unpaid  labour  for  the  upkeep 
of  the  country  roads;  a  system,  needless  to  say,  offering  every 
opportunity  to  the  county  gentry  to  secure  labour  gratuitously 
for  the  embellishment  of  their  estates  and  private  roads  on  the 
pretext  of  serving  public  ends.  The  Oakboy  organisation  was 
particularly  strong  in  the  counties  of  Monaghan,  Armagh,  and 
Tyrone.  In  a  pamphlet  published  about  the  year  1762,  an  account 
is  given  of  a  "rising"  of  the  peasantry  in  the  first-named  county 
and  of  the  heroic  exploits  of  the  officer  in  command  of  the  troops 
engaged  in  suppressing  said  rising,  in  a  manner  which  irresistibly 
recalls  the  present  day  accounts  in  the  English  newspapers  of  the 
punitive  expeditions  of  the  British  army  against  the  "marauding" 
hill  tribes  of  India  or  Dacoits  of  Burmah.  The  work  is  entitled 
the  "True  and  Faithful  Account  of  the  Late  Insurrections  in 
the  North,  with  a  narrative  of  Colonel  Coote's  Campaign  amongst 
the  Oakboys  in  the  County  Monaghan,"  &c.  The  historian  tells 
how,  on  hearing  of  the  "rising,"  the  brave  British  officer  set  off 
with  his  men  to  the  town  of  Castleblayney;  how  on  his  way 
thither  he  passed  numerous  bodies  of  the  peasantry  proceeding 
in  the  same  direction,  each  with  an  oak  bough  or  twig  stuck  in 
his  hat  as  a  sign  of  his  treasonable  sympathies ;  how  on  entering 
Castleblayney  he  warned  the  people  to  disperse,  and  only  received 

29 


30  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

defiant  replies,  and  even  hostile  manifestations;  how  he  then 
took  refuge  in  the  Market  House  and  prepared  to  defend  it  if 
need  be;  and  how,  after  occupying  that  stronghold  all  night,  he 
found  next  morning  the  rebels  had  withdrawn  from  the  town. 
Next,  there  is  an  account  of  the  same  valiant  General's  entry 
into  the  town  of  Ballybay.  Here  he  found  all  the  houses  shut 
against  him,  each  house  proudly  displaying  an  oak  bough  in  its 
windows,  and  all  the  people  seemingly  prepared  to  resist  to  the 
uttermost.  Apparently  determined  to  make  an  example,  and  so 
to  strike  terror,  the  valiant  soldier  and  his  men  proceeded  to 
arrest  the  ringleader,  and,  after  a  severe  struggle,  did  succeed  in 
breaking  into  some  of  the  cabins  of  the  poor  people,  :nd  arrest- 
ing some  person,  who  was  accordingly  hauled  off  to  the  town  of 
Monaghan,  there  to  be  dealt  with  according  to  the  forms  of  a 
law  from  which  every  consideration  of  justice  was  rigorously 
excluded.  In  the  town  of  Clones,  we  are  informed,  the  people 
openly  withstood  the  Royal  forces  in  the  market  place,  but  were, 
of  course,  defeated.  The  Monaghan  Oakboys  were  then  driven 
across  the  borders  of  their  own  county  into  Armagh,  where  they 
made  a  last  stand,  but  were  attacked  and  defeated  in  a  "pitched 
battle,"  the  severity  of  which  may  be  gauged  from  the  fact  that 
no  casualties  were  reported  on  the  side  of  the  troops. 

But  the  general  feeling  of  the  people  was  so  pronouncedly 
against  the  system  of  compulsory  and  unpaid  labour  on  the  roads 
that  Government  subsequently  abolished  the  practice,  and  insti- 
tuted a  road  rate  providing  for  payment  for  such  necessary  labour 
by  a  tax  upon  owners  and  occupiers  of  property  in  the  district. 
Needless  to  say,  the  poor  peasants  who  were  suffering  martyrdom 
in  prison  for  their  efforts  to  remedy  what  the  Government  had 
by  such  remedial  legislation  admitted  to  be  an  injustice,  were  left 
to  rot  in  their  cells — the  usual  fate  of  pioneers  of  reform. 

The  Steelboys  were  a  more  formidable  organisation,  and 
had  their  strongholds  in  the  counties  of  Down  and  Antrim.  They 
were  for  the  most  part  Presbyterian  or  other  dissenters  from  the 
Established  Church,  and,  like  the  Whiteboys,  aimed  at  the  aboli- 
tion or  reduction  of  tithes  and  the  restriction  of  the  system  of 
consolidating  farms  for  grazing  purposes.  They  frequently 
appeared  in  arms,  and  moved  with  a  certain  degree  of  discipline, 
coming  together  from  widely  separated  parts  in  obedience,  ap- 
parently, to  the  orders  of  a  common  centre.  In  the  year  1772  six 
of  their  number  were  arrested  and  lodged  in  the  town  jail  of 
Belfast.  Their  associates  immediately  mustered  in  thousands, 
and  in  the  open  day  marched  upon  that  city,  made  themselves 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  31 

masters  thereof,  stormed  the  jail,  and  released  their  comrades. 
This  daring  action  excited  consternation  in  the  ranks  of  the 
governing  classes,  troops  were  despatched  to  the  spot,  and  every 
precaution  taken  to  secure  the  arrest  of  the  leaders.  Out  of  the 
numerous  prisoners  made  a  batch  were  selected  for  trial,  but 
whether  as  a  result  of  intimidation  or  because  of  their  sympathy 
with  the  prisoners  it  is  difficult  to  tell,  the  jury  in  Belfast  refused 
to  convict,  and  when  the  venue  of  the  trial  was  changed  to  Dub- 
lin, the  Government  was  equally  unfortunate.  The  refusal  of 
the  juries  to  convict  was,  probably,  in  a  large  measure  due  to 
the  unpopularity  of  the  Act  then  just  introduced  to  enable  the 
Government  to  put  persons  accused  of  agrarian  offences  on 
trial  in  a  different  county  to  their  own.  When  this  Act  was 
repealed  the  convictions  and  executions  went  on  as  merrily  as 
before.  Many  a  peasant's  corpse  swung  on  the  gibbet,  and  many 
a  promising  life  was  doomed  to  blight  and  decay  in  the  foul  con- 
fines of  the  prison  hell,  to  glut  the  vengeance  of  the  dominant 
classes.  Arthur  Young,  in  his  Tour  of  Ireland,  thus  describes  the 
state  of  matters  against  which  those  poor  peasants  revolted. 

"A  landlord  in  Ireland  can  scarcely  invent  an  order  which  a 
servant,  labourer,  or  cottier  dares  to  refuse  to  execute.  .  .  .  Dis- 
respect, or  anything  tending  towards  sauciness  he  may  punish 
with  his  cane  or  his  horsewhip  with  the  most  perfect  security.  A 
poor  man  would  have  his  bones  broken  if  he  offered  to  lift  a  hand 
in  his  own  defence.  .  .  .  Landlords  of  consequence  have  assured 
me  that  many  of  their  cottiers  would  think  themselves  honoured 
by  having  their  wives  and  daughters  sent  for  to  the  bed  of  their 
master — a  mark  of  slavery  which  proves  the  oppression  under 
which  such  people  must  live." 

It  will  be  observed  by  the  attentive  student  that  the  "patriots" 
who  occupied  the  public  stage  in  Ireland  during  the  period  we 
have  been  dealing  with  never  once  raised  their  voices  in  protest 
against  such  social  injustice.  Like  their  imitators  today,  they 
regarded  the  misery  of  the  Irish  people  as  a  convenient  handle 
for  political  agitation ;  and,  like  their  imitators  today,  they  were 
«ver  ready  to  outvie  even  the  Government  in  their  denunciation  of 
all  those  who,  more  earnest  than  themselves,  sought  to  find  a 
radical  cure  for  such  misery. 

Of  the  trio  of  patriots — Swift,  Molyneux  and  Lucas — it  may 
be  noted  that  their  fight  was  simply  a  repetition  of  the  fight 
waged  by  Sarsfield  and  his  followers  in  their  day — a  change  of 
persons  and  of  stage  costume  truly,  but  no  change  of  character ; 
a  battle  between  the  kites  and  the  crows. 


32  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

They  found  themselves  members  of  a  privileged  class,  living 
upon  the  plunder  of  the  Irish  people,  but  early  perceived,  to  their 
dismay,  that  they  could  not  maintain  their  position  as  a  privileged 
class  without  the  aid  of  the  English  army;  and  in  return  for 
supplying  that  army  the  English  ruling  class  were  determined 
to  have  the  lion's  share  of  the  plunder.  The  Irish  Parliament 
was  essentially  an  English  institution ;  nothing  like  it  existed  be- 
fore the  Norman  Conquest.  In  that  respect  it  was  on  the  same 
footing  as  is  landlordism,  capitalism,  and  their  natural-born  child 
— pauperism.  England  sent  a  swarm  of  adventurers  to  conquer 
Ireland ;  having  partly  succeeded  these  adventurers  established  a 
Parliament  to  settle  disputes  among  themselves,  to  contrive  meas- 
ures for  robbing  the  natives,  and  to  prevent  their  fellow-tyrants 
who  had  stayed  in  England,  from  claiming  the  spoil.  But  in 
course  of  time  the  section  of  land  thieves  resident  in  England  did 
claim  a  right  to  supervise  the  doings  of  the  adventurers  in  Ireland, 
and  consequently  to  control  their  Parliament.  Hence  arose  Poy- 
ning's  Law,  and  the  subordination  of  Dublin  Parliament  to  the 
London  Parliament.  Finding  this  subordinate  position  of  their 
Parliament  enabled  the  English  ruling  class  to  strip  the  Irish 
workers  of  the  fruits  of  their  toil,  the  more  far-seeing  of  the 
privileged  class  in  Ireland  became  alarmed  lest  the  stripping 
process  should  go  too  far,  and  leave  nothing  for  them  to  fatten 
upon, 

At  once  they  became  patriots,  anxious  that  Ireland — which, 
in  their  phraseology,  meant  the  ruling  class  in  Ireland — should  be 
free  from  the  control  of  the  Parliament  of  England.  Their 
pamphlets,  speeches,  and  all  public  pronouncements  were  devoted 
to  telling  the  world  how  much  nicer,  equitable,  and  altogether 
more  delectable  it  would  be  for  the  Irish  people  to  be  robbed  in 
the  interests  of  a  native-born  aristocracy  than  to  witness  the 
painful  spectacle  of  that  aristocracy  being  compelled  to  divide  the 
plunder  with  its  English  rival.  Perhaps  Swift,  Molyneux,  or 
Lucas  did  not  confess  even  to  themselves  that  such  was  the  basis 
of  their  political  creed.  The  human  race  has  at  all  times  shown 
a  proneness  to  gloss  over  its  basest  actions  with  a  multitude  of 
specious  pretences,  and  to  cover  even  its  iniquities  with  the 
glamour  of  a  false  sentimentality.  But  we  are  not  dealing  with 
appearances  but  realities,  and,  in  justice  to  ourselves,  we  must 
expose  the  flimsy  sophistry  which  strives  to  impart  to  a  sordid, 
self-seeking  struggle  the  appearance  of  a  patriotic  movement.  In 
opposition  to  the  movement  of  the  people  the  patriot  politicians 
and  Government  alike  were  an  undivided  mass. 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  33 

In  their  fight  against  tithes  the  Munster  peasantry,  in  1786, 
issued  a  remarkable  document,  which  we  here  reprint  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  thought  of  the  people  of  the  provinces  of  that  time. 
This  document  was  copied  into  many  papers  at  the  time,  and  was 
also  reprinted  in  a  pamphlet  in  October  of  that  year. 

LETTER  ADDRESSED  TO  MUNSTER  PEASANTRY. 

"To  obviate  the  bad  impression  made  by  the  calumnies  of 
our  enemies,  we  beg  leave  to  submit  to  you  our  claim  for  the 
protection  of  a  humane  gentry  and  humbly  solicit  yours,  if  said 
claim  shall  appear  to  you  founded  in  justice  and  good  policy. 

"In  every  age,  country  and  religion  the  priesthood  are  al- 
lowed to  have  been  artful,  usurping,  and  tenacious  of  their  ill- 
acquired  prerogatives.  Often  have  their  jarring  interests  and 
opinions  deluged  with  Christian  blood  this  long  devoted  isle. 

"Some  thirty  years  ago  our  unhappy  fathers — galled  beyond 
human  sufferance — like  a  captive  lion  vainly  struggling  in  the 
toils,  strove  violently  to  snap  their  bonds  asunder,  but  instead 
rivetted  them  to  more  tight.  Exhausted  by  the  bloody  struggle, 
the  poor  of  this  province  submitted  to  their  oppression,  and  fat- 
tened with  their  vitals  each  decimating  leech. 

"The  luxurious  parson  drowned  in  the  riot  of  his  table  the 
bitter  groans  of  those  wretches  that  his  proctor  fleeced,  and  the 
poor  remnant  of  the  proctor's  rapine  was  sure  to  be  gleaned  by 
the  rapacious  priest;  but  it  was  blasphemy  to  complain  of  him; 
Heaven,  we  thought,  would  wing  its  lightning  to  blast  the  wretch 
who  grudged  the  Holy  Father's  share.  Thus  plundered  by  either 
clergy,  we  -had  reason  to  wish  for  our  simple  Druids  again. 

"At  last,  however,  it  pleased  pitying  Heaven  to  dispel  the 

murky  cloud  of  bigotry  that  hovered  over  us  so  long.    Liberality 

shot  her  cheering  rays,  and  enlightened  the  peasant's  hovel  as  well 

as  the  splendid  hall.    O'Leary  told  us,  plain  as  friar  could,  that  a 

of  universal  love  would  not  confine  His  salvation  to  one 

sect  alone,  and  that  the  subject's  election  was  the  best  title  to  the 

Arn. 

"Thus  improved  in  our  religion  and  our  politics  ...  we  re- 
to  evince  on  every  occasion  the  change  in  our  sentiments  and 
to  succeed  in  our  sincere  attempts.  We  examine  the  double 
cau.-,e  of  our  grievances,  and  debated  long  how  to  get  them  re- 
moved, until  at  length  our  resolves  terminated  in  this  general 
peaceful  remonstrance. 

"Humanity,  justice,  and  policy  enforce  our  request.  Whilst 
the  tithe  farmer  enjoys  the  fruit  of  our  labours,  agriculture  must 


34  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

decrease,  and  while  the  griping  priest  insists  on  more  from  the 
bridegroom  than  he  is  worth,  population  must  be  retarded. 

"Let  the  legislature  befriend  us  now  and  we  are  theirs  for 
ever.  Our  sincerity  in  the  warmth  of  our  attachment  when  once 
professed  was  never  questioned,  and  we  are  bold  to  say  no  such 
imputation  will  ever  fall  on  the  Munster  peasantry. 

"At  a  very  numerous  and  peaceable  meeting  of  the  delegates 
of  the  Munster  peasantry,  held  on  Thursday,  the  1st  day  of  July, 
1786,  the  following  resolutions  were  unanimously  agreed  to,  viz.: 

"Resolved — That  we  will  continue  to  oppose  our  oppressors 
by  the  most  justifiable  means  in  our  power,  either  until  they  are 
glutted  with  our  blood  or  until  humanity  raises  her  angry  voice 
in  the  councils  of  the  nation  to  protect  the  toiling  peasant  and 
lighten  his  burden." 

"Resolved — That  the  fickleness  of  the  multitude  makes  it 
necessary  for  all  and  each  of  us  to  swear  not  to  pay  voluntarily 
priest  or  parson  more  than  as  follows : 

"Potatoes,  first  crop,  6s.  per  acre;  do.,  second  crop,  4s.; 
wheat,  4s.;  barley,  4s.;  oats,  3s.;  meadowing,  2s.  8d. ;  marriage, 
Ss. ;  baptism,  Is.  6d. ;  each  family  confession,  2s. ;  Par.  Priest's 
Sun.  Mass,  Is. ;  any  other,  Is. ;  Extreme  Unction,  Is. 
"Signed  by  order, 

"WILLIAM  O'DRISCOL, 
"General  to  the  Munster  Peasantry." 


CHAPTER  V 
GRATTAN'S  PARLIAMENT. 

"Dynasties  and  thrones  are  not  half  so  important  as  workshops,  farms 
and  factories.  Rather  we  may  say  that  dynasties  and  thrones,  and  even 
provisional  governments,  are  good  for  anything  exactly  in  proportion  as 
they  secure  fair  play,  justice  and  freedom  to  those  who  labour." — John 
Mitchel,  1848. 

WE  now  come  to  the  period  of  the  Volunteers.  In  this  year, 
1778,  the  people  of  Belfast,  alarmed  by  rumours  of  intended 
descents  of  French  privateers,  sent  to  the  Irish  Secretary  of 
State  at  Dublin  Castle  asking  for  a  military  force  to  protect  their 
town.  But  the  English  army  had  long  been  drafted  off  to  the 
United  States — then  rebel  American  colonies  of  England — and 
Ireland  was  practically  denuded  of  troops.  Dublin  Castle  an- 
swered Belfast  in  the  famous  letter  which  stated  that  the  only 
force  available  for  the  North  would  be  "a  troop  or  two  of  horse, 
or  part  of  a  company  of  invalids." 

On  receipt  of  this  news  the  people  began  arming  themselves 
and  publicly  organising  Volunteer  corps  throughout  the  country. 
In  a  short  time  Ireland  possessed  an  army  of  some  80,000  citizen 
soldiers,  equipped  with  all  the  appurtenances  of  war;  drilled, 
organised,  and  in  every  way  equal  to  any  force  at  the  command 
of  a  regular  Government.  All  the  expenses  of  the  embodiment  of 
this  Volunteer  army  were  paid  by  subscriptions  of  private  indi- 
viduals. As  soon  as  the  first  alarm  of  foreign  invasion  had 
passed,  the  Volunteers  turned  their  attention  to  home  affairs  and 
began  formulating  certain  demands  for  reform — demands  which 
the  Government  was  not  strong  enough  to  resist.  Eventually, 
after  a  few  years'  agitation  on  the  Volunteer  side,  met  by  intrigue 
on  the  part  of  the  Government,  the  "patriot"  party,  led  by  Grattan 
and  Flood,  and  supported  by  the  moral  (?)  pressure  of  a  Volun- 
teer review  outside  the  walls  of  the  Parliament  House,  succeeded 
in  obtaining  from  the  legislature  a  temporary  abandonment  of 

35 


36  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

the  claim  set  up  by  the  English  Parliament  to  force  laws  upon 
the  assembly  at  College  Green.  This  and  the  concession  of  Free 
Trade  (enabling  Irish  merchants  to  trade  on  equal  terms  wit: 
their  English  rivals)  inaugurated  what  is  known  in  Irish  History 
as  Grattan's  Parliament.  At  the  present  day  our  political  agita- 
tors never  tire  of  telling  us  with  the  most  painful  iteration  that 
the  period  covered  by  Grattan's  Parliament  was  a  period  of  un- 
exampled prosperity  for  Ireland,  and  that,  therefore,  we  may 
expect  a  renewal  of  this  same  happy  state  with  a  return  of  our 
•'native  legislature"  as  they  somewhat  facetiously  style  that  abor- 
tive product  of  political  intrigue — Home  Rule. 

We  might,  if  we  choose,  make  a  point  against  our  political 
historians  by  pointing  out  that  prosperity  such  as  they  speak  of 
is  purely  capitalistic  prosperity — that  is  to  say,  prosperity  gauged 
merely  by  the  volume  of  wealth  produced,  and  entirely  ignoring 
the  manner  in  which  the  wealth  is  distributed  amongst  the  workers 
who  produce  it.     Thus  in  a  previous  article  we  quoted  a  manifesto 
issued  by  the  Munster  Peasantry  in  1786,  in  which — four  years 
after  Grattan's  Parliament  had  been  established — they  called  upon 
ihe  legislature  to. help  them,  and  resolved  if  such  help  was  not 
forthcoming — and   it  was   not   forthcoming — to  "resist  our   op- 
pressors until  they  are  glutted  with  our  blood,"  an  expression 
which  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  "prosperity"  of  Grattan's 
Parliament  had  not  penetrated  far  into  Munster.     In  the  year 
1794  a  pamphlet  published  at  7  Chapel  Street,  Dublin,  stated  that 
the  average  wage  of  a  clay  labourer  in  the  County  Meath  reached 
only  6d.  per  day  in  Summer,  and  4d.  per  day  in  Winter;  and  in 
the  pages  of  the  Dublin  Journal,  a  ministerial  organ,  and  the  Dub- 
lin Evening  Post,  a  supporter  of  Grattan's  party,  for  the  month  of 
April,  1796,  there  is  to  be  found  an  advertisement  of  a  charity 
sermon  to  be  preached  in  the  Parish  Chapel,  Meath  Street,  Dub- 
lin, in  which  advertisement  there  occurs  the  statement  that  in 
three  streets  of  the  Parish  of  St.  Catherine's  "no  less  than  2,000 
souls  had  been  found  in  a  starving  condition."     Evidently  "pros- 
perity" had  not  much  meaning  to  the  people  of  St.  Catherine's. 
But  this  is  not  the  ground  we  mean  at  present  to  take  up. 
We  will  rather  admit,  for  the  purpose  of  our  argument,  that  the 
Home  Rule  capitalistic  definition  of  "prosperity"  is  the  correct 
one,  and  that  Ireland  was  prosperous  under  Grattan's  Parliament, 
but  we  must  emphatically  deny  that  such  prosperity  was  in  any 
but  an  infinitesimal  degree  produced  by  Parliament.     Here  again 
the  Socialist  philosophy  of  history  provides  the  key  to  the  problem 
— points  to  the  economic  development  as  the  true  solution.     The 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  37 

sudden  advance  of  trade  in  the  period  in  question  was  almost 
solely  due  to  the  introduction  of  mechanical  power,  and  the  conse- 
quent cheapening  of  manufactured  goods.  It  was  the  era  of  the 
Industrial  Revolution  when  the  domestic  industries  we  had  in- 
herited from  the  Middle  Ages  were  finally  replaced  by  the  factory 
system  of  modern  times.  The  water  frame,  invented  by  Ark- 
wright  in  1769;  the  spinning  jenny,  patented  by  Hargreaves  in 
1770;  Crampton's  mechanical  mule,  introduced  in  1779;  and  the 
application  in  1788  of  the  steam-engine  to  blast  furnaces,  all  com- 
bined to  cheapen  the  cost  of  production,  and  so  to  lower  the  price 
of  goods  in  the  various  industries  affected.  This  brought  into  the 
field  fresh  hosts  of  customers,  and  so  gave  an  immense  impetus 
to  trade  in  general  in  Great  Britain  as  well  as  in  Ireland.  Be- 
tween 1782  and  1804  the  cotton  trade  more  than  trebled  its  total 
output;  between  1783  and  1796  the  linen  trade  increased  nearly 
threefold;  in  the  eight  years  between  1788  and  1796  the  iron 
trade  doubled  in  volume.  The  latter  trade  did  not  long  survive 
this  burst  of  prosperity.  The  invention  of  smelting  by  coal  in- 
stead of  wood  in  1750,  and  the  application  of  steam  to  blast- 
furnaces, already  spoken  of,  placed  the  Irish  manufacturer  at  an 
enormous  disadvantage  in  dealing  with  his  English  rival,  but  in 
the  halcyon  days  of  brisk  trade — between  1780  and  1800 — this 
was  not  very  acutely  felt.  But,  when  trade  once  more  assumed 
its  normal  aspect  of  keen  competition,  Irish  manufacturers  with- 
out a  native  coal  supply,*  and  almost  entirely  dependent  on  im- 
ported English  coal,  found  it  impossible  to  compete  with  their 
trade  rivals  in  the  sister  country  who,  with  abundant  supplies  of 
coal  at  their  own  door,  found  it  very  easy  before  the  days  of  rail- 
ways to  undersell  and  ruin  the  unfortunate  Irish.  The  same 
fate,  and  for  the  same  reason,  befell  the  other  important  Irish 
trades.  The  period  marked  politically  by  Grattan's  Parliament 
was  a  period  of  commercial  inflation  due  to  the  introduction  of 
mechanical  improvements  into  the  staple  industries  of  the  country. 
As  long  as  such  machinery  was  worked  by  hand  Ireland  could 
hold  her  place  on  the  markets,  but  with  this  application  of  steam 
to  the  service  of  industry,  which  began  on  a  small  scale  in  1785, 
and  the  introduction  of  the  power-loom,  which  first  came  into 
general  use  about  1813,  the  immense  natural  advantage  of  an 
indigenous  coal  supply  finally  settled  the  contest  in  favour  of 
English  manufacturers. 

A  native  Parliament  might  have  hindered  the  subsequent  de- 

*At  this  time  Ireland's  coal  resources  had  not  been  developed.    English 
capitalists  have  to  this  day  prevented  the  workings  of  Irish  mines. 


38  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

cay  as  an  alien  Parliament  may  have  hastened  it,  but  in  either  case,, 
under  capitalistic  conditions,  the  process  itself  was  as  inevitable  as 
the  economic  evolution  of  which  it  was  one  of  the  most  significant 
signs.  How  little  Parliament  had  to  do  with  it  may  be  gauged 
by  comparing  the  positions  of  Ireland  and  Scotland.  In  the  year 
1799,  Mr.  Foster  in  the  Irish  Parliament  stated  that  the  produc- 
tion of  linen  was  twice  as  great  in  Ireland  as  in  Scotland.  The 
actual  figures  given  were  for  the  year  1796 — 23,000,000  yards 
for  Scotland  as  against  46,705,319  for  Ireland.  This  discrepancy 
in  favour  of  Ireland  he  attributed  to  the  native  Parliament.  But 
by  the  year  1830,  according  to  McCulloch's  Commercial  Diction- 
ary, the  one  port  of  Dundee  in  Scotland  exported  more  linen  than 
all  Ireland.  Both  countries  had  been  deprived  of  self-government. 
Why  had  Scottish  manufacture  advanced  whilst  that  of  Ireland 
had  decayed?  Because  Scotland  possessed  a  native  coal  supply, 
and  every  facility  for  industrial  pursuits  which  Ireland  lacked. 
The  "prosperity"  of  Ireland  under  Grattan's  Parliament  was 
almost  as  little  due  to  that  Parliament  as  the  dust  caused  by  the 
revolutions  of  the  coach-wheel  was  due  to  the  presence  of  the 
fly  who,  sitting  on  the  coach,  viewed  the  dust,  and  fancied  him- 
self the  author  therof.  And,  therefore,  true  prosperity  cannot 
be  brought  to  Ireland  except  by  measures  somewhat  more  drastic 
than  that  Parliament  ever  imagined. 


CHAPTER  VI 
CAPITALIST  BETRAYAL  OF  THE  IRISH  VOLUNTEERS 

"Remember  still,  through  good  and  ill, 
How  vain  were  prayers  and  tears. 
How  vain  were  words  till  flashed  the  swords 
Of  the  Irish  Volunteers." — Thomas  Davis. 

THE  theory  that  the  fleeting  "prosperity"  of  Ireland  in  the  time 
we  refer  to  was  caused  by  the  Parliament  of  Grattan  is  only 
useful  to  its  propagators  as  a  prop  to  their  argument  that  the 
Legislative  Union  between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  destroyed 
the  trade  of  the  latter  country,  and  that,  therefore,  the  repeal  ofi 
that  Union  would  lead  to  the  re-establishment  of  Irish  manu- 
factures on  a  paying  basis.  The  fact  that  the  Union  placed  all 
Irish  manufactures  upon  an  absolutely  equal  basis  legally  with 
the  manufactures  of  England  is  usually  ignored,  or,  worse  still, 
is  so  perverted  in  its  statement  as  to  leave  the  impression  that  the 
reverse  is  the  case.*  In  fact  many  thousands  of  our  countrymen 
still  believe  that  English  laws  prohibit  mining  in  Ireland  after 
certain  minerals,  and  the  manufacture  of  certain  articles. 

A  moment's  reflection  should  remove  such  an  idea.  An 
English  capitalist  will  cheerfully  invest  his  money  in  Timbuctoo 
or  China,  or  Russia,  or  anywhere  that  he  thinks  he  can  secure  a 
profit,  even  though  it  may  be  in  the  territory  of  his  mortal  enemy. 
He  does  not  invest  his  money  in  order  to  give  employment  to  his 
workers,  but  to  make  a  profit,  and  hence  it  would  be  foolish  to 
expect  that  he  would  allow  his  Parliament  to  make  laws  pro- 
hibiting him  from  opening  mines  or  factories  in  Ireland  to  make 
a  profit  out  of  the  Irish  workers.  And  there  are  not,  and  have 
not  been  since  the  Union,  any  such  laws. 

If  the  student  desires  to  continue  the  study  of  this  remark- 
able controversy  in  Irish  history  and  to  compare  this  Parliamen- 


*It  is  true  that  legally  Irish  and  English  manufacturers  are  upon  a 
footing  of  equality,  but  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  Mr.  Henry  Ford  had 
to  obtain  a  license  in  England  before  he  could  erect  his  Cork  motor  factory 
in  1917.— ED. 

39 


40  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

tarian  theory  of  Irish  industrial  decline  with  that  we  have  just 
advanced — the  Socialist  theory  outlined  in  our  previous  chapter- 
he  has  an  easy  and  effective  course  to  pursue  in  order  to  bring 
this  matter  to  the  test.  Let  him  single  out  the  most  prominent 
of  the  exponents  of  Parliamentarianism  and  propound  the  follow- 
ing question : 

Please  explain  the  process  by  which  the  removal  of  Parlia- 
ment from  Dublin  to  London — a  removal  absolutely  unaccom- 
panied by  any  legislative  interference  with  Irish  industry — pre- 
vented the  Irish  capitalist  class  from  continuing  to  prouce  goods 
for  the  Irish  market  ? 

He  will  get  no  logical  answer  to  his  question — no  answer 
that  any  reputable  thinker  on  economic  questions  would  accept 
for  one  moment.  He  will  instead  undoubtedly  be  treated  to  a 
long  enumeration  of  the  number  of  tradesmen  and  labourers  em- 
ployed at  manufactures  in  Ireland  before  the  Union,  and  the 
number  employed  at  some  specific  period,  20  or  30  years  after- 
wards. This  was  the  method  adopted  by  Daniel  O'Connell,  the 
Liberator,  in  his  first  great  speech  in  favour  of  Repeal  of  the 
Union,  the  speech  in  which  he  began  his  Repeal  agitation,  and  has 
been  slavishly  copied  and  popularised  by  all  his  imitators  since. 
But  neither  O'Connell  nor  any  of  his  imitators  have  ever  yet  at- 
tempted to  analyse  and  explain  the  process  by  which  those  indus- 
tries were  destroyed.  The  nearest  approach  to  such  an  explana- 
tion ever  essayed  is  the  statement  that  the  Union  led  to  absentee 
landlordism  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  custom  of  these  absentees 
from  Irish  manufacturers.  Such  an  explanation  is  simply  no 
explanation  at  all.  It  is  worse  than  childish.  Who  would  seri- 
ously contend  that  the  loss  of  a  few  thousand  aristocratic  clients 
killed,  for  instance,  the  leather  industry,  once  so  flourishing  in 
Ireland  and  now  scarcely  existent.  The  district  in  the  city  of 
Dublin  which  lies  between  Thomas  Street  and  the  South  Circular 
Road  was  once  a  busy  hive  of  men  engaged  in  the  tanning  of 
leather  and  all  its  allied  trades.  Now  that  trade  has  almost  en- 
tirely disappeared  from  this  district.  Were  the  members  of  the 
Irish  Parliament  and  the  Irish  landlords  the  only  wearers  of  shoes 
in  Ireland? — the  only  persons  for  whose  use  leather  was  tanned 
and  manufactured  ?  If  not,  how  did  their  emigration  to  England 
make  it  impossible  for  the  Irish  manufacturer  to  produce  shoes 
or  harness  for  the  millions  of  people  still  left  in  the  country  after 
the  Union?  The  same  remark  applies  to  the  weavers,  once  so 
flourishing  a  body  in  the  same  district,  to  the  woolen  trade,  to  the 
fishing  trade,  to  the  iron  trade,  to  the  flour  milling  trade,  and  so 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  41 

on  down  along  the  line.  The  people  of  Ireland  still  wanted  all 
these  necessaries  of  life  after  the  Union  just  as  much  as  before, 
yet  the  superficial  historian  tells  us  that  the  Irish  manufacturer 
was  unable  to  cater  to  their  demand,  and  went  out  of  business 
accordingly.  Well,  we  Irish  are  credited  with  being  gifted  with  a 
strong  sense  of  humour,  but  one  is  almost  inclined  to  doubt  it  in 
face  of  the  gravity  with  which  this  Parliamentary  theory  has  been 
accepted  by  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people. 

It  surely  is  an  amusing  theory  when  we  consider  that  it  im- 
plies that  the  Irish  manufacturers  were  so  heartbroken  grieving 
over  losing  the  trade  of  a  few  thousand  rack-renting  landlords 
that  they  could  not  continue  to  make  a  profit  by  supplying  the 
wants  of  the  millions  of  Irish  people  at  their  doors.  The  English 
and  the  Scotch,  the  French  and  the  Belgian  manufacturers,  miners, 
merchants,  and  fishermen  could  and  did  wax  fat  and  prosperous 
by  supplying  the  wants  of  the  Irish  commonalty,  but  the  Irish 
manufacturer  could  not.  He  had  to  shut  up  shop  and  go  to  the 
poorhouse  because  my  Lord  Rackrent  of  Castle  Rackrent,  and 
his  immediate  personal  following,  had  moved  to  London. 

If  our  Parliamentarian  historians  had  not  been  the  most 
superficial  of  all  recorders  of  history;  if  their  shallowness  had 
not  been  so  phenomenal  that  there  is  no  equal  to  it  to  be  found 
except  in  the  bigotry  and  stupidity  of  their  loyalist  rivals  they 
might  easily  have  formulated  from  the  same  set  of  facts  another 
theory  equally  as  useful  to  their  cause,  and  more  in  consonance 
with  the  truth.  That  other  theory  may  be  stated  thus : 

That  the  Act  of  Union  was  made  possible  because  Irish  man- 
ufacture was  weak,  and,  consequently,  Ireland  had  not  an  ener- 
getic capitalist  class  with  sufficient  public  spirit  and  influence  to 
prevent  the  Union. 

Industrial  decline  having  set  in  the  Irish  capitalist  class  was 
not  able  to  combat  the  influence  of  the  corruption  fund  of  the 
English  Government,  or  to  create  and  lead  a  party  strong  enough 
to  arrest  the  demoralisation  of  Irish  public  life.  This  we  are 
certain  is  the  proper  statement  of  the  case.  Not  that  the  loss  of 
the  Parliament  destroyed  Irish  manufacture,  but  that  the  decline 
of  Irish  manufacture,  due  to  causes  already  outlined,  made  pos- 
sible the  destruction  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  Had  a  strong, 
enterprising  and  successful  Irish  capitalist  class  been  in  existence 
in  Ireland  a  Parliamentary  reform  investing  the  Irish  masses 
with  the  suffrage  would  have  been  won  under  the  guns  of  the 
Volunteers  without  a  drop  of  blood  being  shed,  and  with  a  Par- 
liament elected  under  such  conditions  the  Act  of  Union  would 


42  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

have  been  impossible.  But  the  Irish  capitalist  class  used  the 
Volunteers  to  force  commercial  reforms  from  the  English  Gov- 
ernment and  then,  headed  by  Henry  Grattan,  forsook  and  de- 
nounced the  Volunteers  when  that  body  sought  by  reforming  the 
representative  system  to  make  it  more  responsive  to  the  will  of 
the  people,  and  thus  to  secure  in  peace  what  they  had  won  by 
the  threat  of  violence.  An  Ireland  controlled  by  popular  suffrage 
would  undoubtedly  have  sought  to  save  Irish  industry  while  it 
was  yet  time  by  a  stringent  system  of  protection,  which  would 
have  imposed  upon  imported  goods  a  tax  heavy  enough  to  neu- 
tralise the  advantages  accruing  to  the  foreigner  from  his  coal 
supply,  and  such  a  system  might  have  averted  that  decline  of 
Irish  industry  which,  as  we  have  already  stated,  was  otherwise 
inevitable.  But  the  only  hope  of  realising  that  Ireland  lay  then 
in  the  armed  force  of  the  Volunteers,  and  as  the  capitalist  class 
did  not  feel  themselves  strong  enough  as  a  class  to  hold  the  ship 
of  state  against  the  aristocracy  on  the  one  hand  and  the  people 
on  the  other  they  felt  impelled  to  choose  the  only  other  alternative 
— viz.,  to  elect  to  throw  in  their  lot  with  one  or  other  of  the  con- 
tending parties.  They  chose  to  put  their  trust  in  the  aristocracy, 
abandoned  the  populace,  and  as  a  result  were  deserted  by  the 
class  whom  they  had  trusted,  and  went  down  into  bankruptcy  and 
slavery  with  the  class  they  had  betrayed. 

A  brief  glance  at  the  record  of  the  Volunteer  movement  will 
ilhistrate  the  far-reaching  treachery  with  which  the  capitalist  class 
of  Ireland  emulated  their  aristocractic  compatriots  who 

"Sold  for  place  or  gold 
Their  country  and  their  God," 

but,  unlike  them,  contrived  to  avoid  the  odium  their  acts  deserved. 
At  the  inception  of  this  movement  Ireland  was  under  the 
Penal  Laws.  Against  the  Roman  Catholic,  statutes  unequalled 
in  ferocity  were  still  upon  the  statute  books.  Those  laws, 
although  ostensibly  designed  to  convert  Catholics  to  the  Pro- 
testant Faith,  were  in  reality  chiefly  aimed  at  the  conversion  of 
Catholic-owned  property  into  Protestant-owned  property.  The 
son  of  a  Catholic  property  holder  could  dispossess  his  own  father 
and  take  possession  of  his  property  simply  by  making  affidavit 
that  he,  the  son,  had  accepted  the  Protestant  religion.  Thence- 
forth the  father  would  be  by  law  a  pensioner  upon  the  son's 
bounty.  The  wife  of  a  Catholic  could  deprive  her  husband  of 
all  control  over  his  property  by  simply  becoming  a  Protestant. 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  43 

A  Catholic  could  not  own  a  horse  worth  more  than  £5.  If  he 
did,  any  Protestant  could  take  his  horse  from  him  in  the  light 
of  day  and  give  him  £5  in  full  payment  of  all  rights  in  the  horse. 
On  the  head  of  a  Catholic  schoolmaster  or  a  Catholic  priest  the 
same  price  was  put  as  on  the  head  of  a  wolf.  Catholics  were 
eligible  to  no  public  office,  and  were  debarred  from  most  of  the 
professions. 

In  fact  the  Catholic  religion  was  an  illegal  institution.  Yet 
it  grew  and  flourished,  and  incidentally  it  may  be  observed  it 
secured  a  hold  upon  the  affections  and  in  the  hearts  of  the  Irish 
people  as  rapidly  as  it  lost  the  same  hold  in  France  and  Italy, 
where  the  Catholic  religion  was  a  dominant  state  institution — 
a  fact  worth  noting  by  those  Catholics  who  are  clamouring  for 
the  endowment  of  Catholic  institutions  out  of  public  funds. 

It  must  be  remembered  by  the  student,  however,  that  the 
Penal  Laws,  although  still  upon  the  statute  book,  had  been  largely 
inoperative  before  the  closing  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
This  was  not  due  to  any  clemency  on  the  part  of  the  English  Gov- 
ernment, but  was  the  result  of  the  dislike  of  those  laws  felt  by 
the  majority  of  intelligent  Irish  Protestants.  The  latter  simply 
refused  to  take  advantage  of  them  even  to  their  personal  ag- 
grandisement, and  there  are  very  few  cases  on  actual  record 
where  the  property  of  Catholics  was  wrested  from  them  by  their 
Protestant  neighbours  as  a  result  of  the  Penal  Laws  in  the 
generations  following  the  close  of  the  Williamite  war.  These 
laws  were  in  fact  too  horrible  to  be  enforced,  and  in  this  matter 
public  opinion  was  far  ahead  of  legislative  enactment.  All  his- 
torians agree  upon  this  point. 

Class  lines,  on  the  other  hand,  were  far  more  strictly  drawn 
than  religious  lines,  as  they  always  were  in  Ireland  since  the 
break  up  of  the  clan  system,  and  as  they  are  to  this  day.  We 
have  the  words  of  such  an  eminent  authority  as  Archbishop 
Whately  in  this  connection  which  coming,  as  they  do,  from  the 
pen  of  a  supporter  of  the  British  Government  and  of  the  Pro- 
testant Establishment,  are  doubly  valuable  as  a  witness  to  the 
fact  that  Irish  politics  and  divisions  turn  primarily  around  ques- 
tions of  property  and  only  nominally  around  questions  of  religion. 
He  says: 

"Many  instances  have  come  to  my  knowledge  of  the  most 
furious  Orangemen  stripping  their  estates  of  a  Protestant  ten- 
antry who  had  been  there  for  generations  and  letting  their  land 
to  Roman  Catholics  .  .  .  at  an  advance  of  a  shilling  an  acre." 

These  Protestants  so  evicted,  be  it  remembered,  were  the 


44  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

men  and  women  whose  fathers  had  saved  Ireland  for  King  Wil- 
liam and  Protestantism  as  against  King  James  and  Catholicity, 
and  the  evictions  here  recorded  were  the  rewards  of  their  father's 
victory  and  their  own  fidelity.  In  addition  to  this  class  line  on 
the  economic  field  the  political  representation  of  the  country 
was  the  exclusive  property  of  the  upper  class. 

A  majority  of  the  members  of  the  Irish  Parliament  sat  as  the 
nominees  of  certain  members  of  the  aristocracy  who  owned  the 
estates  on  which  the  boroughs  they  "represented"  were  situated. 
Such  boroughs  were  called  "Pocket  Boroughs"  from  the  fact 
that  they  were  as  much  under  the  control  of  the  landed  aristocrat 
as  if  he  carried  them  in  his  pocket.  In  addition  to  this,  through- 
out the  entire  island  the  power  of  electing  members  of  Parliament 
was  the  exclusive  possession  of  a  privileged  few.  The  great  mass 
of  the  Catholic  and  Protestant  population  were  voteless. 

This-  was  the  situation  when  the  Volunteer  movement  arose. 
There  were  thus  three  great  political  grievances  before  the  Irish 
public.  The  English  Parliament  had  prohibited  Irish  trade  with 
Europe  and  America  except  through  an  English  port,  thus  crip- 
pling the  development  of  Irish  capitalism;  representation  in  the 
House  of  Commons  in  Dublin  was  denied  alike  to  Protestant  and 
Catholic  workers,  and  to  all  save  a  limited  few  Protestant  capital- 
ists, and  the  nominees  of  the  aristocracy;  and  finally  all  Catholics 
were  suffering  under  religious  disabilities.  As  soon  as  the  Volun- 
teers (all  of  whom  were  Protestants)  had  arms  in  their  hands 
they  began  to  agitate  for  the  removal  of  all  these  grievances.  On 
the  first  all  were  unanimous,  and  accordingly  when  they  paraded 
the  streets  of  Dublin  on  the  day  of  the  assembling  of  Parliament, 
they  hung  upon  the  mouths  of  their  cannon  placards  bearing  the 
significant  words : 

FREE  Tw  ^LSE-— 

and  the  implied  threat  from  a  united  people  in  arms  won  their 
case.  Free  Trade  was  granted.  And  at  that  moment  an  Irish 
Republic  could  have  been  won  as  surely  as  Free  Trade.  But 
when  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Volunteers  proceeded  to  outline 
their  demands  for  the  removal  of  their  remaining  political  griev- 
ances— to  demand  popular  representation  in  Parliament — all  their 
leaders  deserted.  They  had  elected  aristocrats,  glib-tongued  law- 
yers and  professional  patriots  to  be  their  officers,  and  all  the 
higher  ranks  betrayed  them  in  their  hour  of  need.  After  the 
granting  of  Free  Trade  a  Volunteer  convention  was  summoned 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  45 

to  meet  in  Dublin  to  consider  the  question  of  popular  representation 
in  Parliament.  Lord  Charlemont,  the  commander-in-chief  of  the 
body,  repudiated  the  convention ;  his  example  was  followed  by 
all  the  lesser  fry  of  the  aristocratic  officers,  and  finally  when  it  did 
meet  Henry  Grattan,  whose  political  and  personal  fortunes  the 
Volunteers  had  made,  denounced  them  in  Parliament  as  "an 
armed  rabble." 

The  convention  after  some  fruitless  debate  adjourned  in  con- 
fusion, and  on  a  subsequent  attempt  to  convene  another  Conven- 
tion the  meeting  was  prohibited  by  Government  proclamation  and 
the  signers  of  the  call  for  the  assembly  were  arrested  and  heavily 
fined.  The  Government,  having  made  peace  in  America,  with  the 
granting  of  American  independence,  had  been  able  to  mass  troops 
in  Ireland  and  prepare  to  try  conclusions  with  the  Volunteers. 
Its  refusal  to  consider  the  demand  for  popular  representation  was 
its  gage  of  battle,  and  the  proclamation  of  the  last  attempt  at  a 
Convention  was  the  sign  of  its  victory.  The  Volunteers  had,  in 
fact,  surrendered  without  a  blow.  The  responsibility  for  this 
shameful  surrender  rests  entirely  upon  the  Irish  capitalist  class. 
Had  they  stood  by  the  reformers  the  defection  of  the  aristocracy 
would  have  mattered  little,  indeed  it  is  certain  that  the  radical  ele- 
ment must  have  foreseen  and  been  prepared  for  that  defection. 
But  the  act  of  the  merchants  in  throwing  in  their  lot  with  the 
aristocracy  could  not  have  been  foreseen ;  it  was  too  shameful  an 
act  to  be  anticipated  by  any  but  its  perpetrators.  It  must  not 
be  imagined,  moreover,  that  these  reactionary  elements  made  no 
attempt  to  hide  their  treason  to  the  cause  of  freedom. 

On  the  contrary,  they  were  most  painstaking  in  keeping  up  the 
appearance  of  popular  sympathies  and  in  endeavouring  to  divert 
public  attention  along  other  lines  than  those  on  which  the  real 
issues  were  staked.  There  is  a  delicious  passage  in  the  "Life  of 
Henry  Grattan,"  edited  by  his  son,  describing  the  manner  in  which 
the  Government  obtained  possession  of  the  arms  of  the  various 
corps  of  Dublin  Volunteers,  which  presents  in  itself  a  picture  in 
microcosm  of  very  many  epochs  of  Irish  history  and  illustrates  the 
salient  characteristics  of  the  classes  and  the  part  they  play  in 
Irish  public  life. 

Dublin  is  Ireland  in  miniature;  nay,  Dublin  is  Ireland  in  con- 
centrated essence.  All  that  makes  Ireland  great  or  miserable, 
magnificent  or  squalid,  ideally  revolutionary  or  hopelessly  reaction- 
ary, grandly  unselfish  or  vilely  treacherous,  is  stronger  and  more 
pronounced  in  Dublin  than  elsewhere  in  Ireland.  Thus  the  part 
played  by  Dublin  in  any  National  crisis  is  sure  to  be  simply  a 


46  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

metropolitan  setting  for  the  role  played  by  the  same  passions 
throughout  the  Irish  provinces.  Hence  the  value  of  the  follow- 
ing unconscious  contribution  to  the  study  of  Irish  history  from 
the  pen  of  the  son  of  Henry  Grattan. 

In  Dublin  there  were  three  divisions  of  Volunteers — corre- 
sponding to  the  three  popular  divisions  of  the  "patriotic"  forces. 
There  was  the  Liberty  Corps,  recruited  exclusively  from  the  work- 
ing class ;  the  Merchants  Corps,  composed  of  the  capitalist  class, 
and  the  Lawyers  Corps,  the  members  of  the  legal  fraternity.  Henry 
Grattan,  Jr.,  telling  of  the  action  of  the  Government  after  the 
passage  of  the  "Arms  and  Gunpowder  Bill"  requiring  the  Volun- 
teers to  give  up  their  arms  to  the  authorities  for  safe  keeping, 
says  the  Government  "seized  the  artillery  of  the  Liberty  Corps, 
made  a  private  arrangement  by  which  it  got  possession  of  that 
belonging  to  the  Merchants  Corps;  they  induced  the  lawyers 
to  give  up  theirs,  first  making  a  public  procession  before  they  were 
surrendered." 

In  other  words  and  plainer  language,  the  Government  had  to 
use  force  to  seize  the  arms  of  the  working  men,  but  the  capitalists 
gave  up  theirs  secretly  as  the  result  of  a  private  bargain,  the  terms 
of  which  we  are  not  made  acquainted  with ;  and  the  lawyers  took 
theirs  through  the  streets  of  Dublin  in  a  public  parade  to  maintain 
the  prestige  of  the  legal  fraternity  in  the  eyes  of  the  credulous 
Dublin  workers,  and  then,  whilst  their  throats  were  still  husky 
from  publicly  cheering  the  "guns  of  the  Volunteers,"  privately 
handed  those  guns  over  to  the  enemies  of  the  people. 

The  working  men  fought,  the  capitalists  sold  out,  and  the 
lawyers  bluffed. 

Then,  as  ever  in  Ireland,  the  fate  of  the  country  depended 
upon  the  issue  of  the  struggle  between  the  forces  of  aristocracy 
and  the  forces  of  democracy.  The  working  class  in  town  and  the 
peasantry  in  the  country  were  enthusiastic  over  the  success  of  the 
revolutionary  forces  in  America  and  France,  and  were  burning 
with  a  desire  to  emulate  their  deeds  in  Ireland.  But  the  Irish 
capitalist  class  dreaded  the  people  more  than  they  feared  the 
British  Government,  and  in  the  crisis  of  their  country's  fate  their 
influence  and  counsels  were  withdrawn  from  the  popular  side. 
Whilst  this  battle  was  being  fought  out  with  such  fatal  results 
to  the  cause  of  freedom  there  was  going  on  elsewhere  in  Ireland 
a  more  spectacular  battle  over  a  mock  issue.  And  as  is  the  wont  of 
things  in  Ireland  this  sham  battle  engrosses  the  greatest  amount 
of  attention  in  Irish  history.  We  have  already  alluded  to  the 
Henry  Flood  who  made  himself  conspicuous  in  the  Irish  Parlia- 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  47 

ment  by  out-Heroding  Herod  in  his  denunciation  of  the  Govern- 
ment for  failing  to  hang  enough  peasants  to  satisfy  him.  Mr. 
Henry  Grattan  we  have  also  introduced  to  our  readers.  These 
two  men  were  the  Parliamentary  leaders  of  the  "patriot  party"  in 
the  House  of  Commons — the  "rival  Harries,"  as  the  Dublin 
crowd  sarcastically  described  them.  When  the  threat  of  the  Vol- 
unteers compelled  the  English  authorities  to  formally  renounce  all 
its  rights  to  make  laws  binding  the  Irish  Parliament  these  two 
patriots  quarrelled,  and,  we  are  seriously  informed  by  the  grave 
and  learned  historians,  the  subject  of  their  quarrel  divided  all 
Ireland.  In  telling  of  what  that  subject  was  we  hope  our  readers 
will  not  accuse  us  of  fooling ;  we  are  not,  although  the  temptation 
is  almost  irresistible.  We  are  soberly  stating  the  historical  facts. 
The  grave  and  learned  historians  tell  us  that  Grattan  and  Flood 
quarrelled  because  Flood  insisted  that  England  should  be  required 
to  promise  that  it  would  never  again  interfere  to  make  laws  gov- 
erning the  Irish  Parliament,  and  Grattan  insisted  that  it  would  be 
an  insult  to  the  honour  of  England  to  require  any  such  promise. 

As  we  have  said,  the  grave  and  learned  historians  declare 
that  all  Ireland  took  sides  in  this  quarrel,  even  such  a  hater  of 
England  as  John  Mitchel  in  his  History  of  Ireland  seemingly 
believes  this  to  be  the  case.  Yet  we  absolutely  refuse  to  give  any 
credence  to  the  story.  We  are  firmly  convinced  that  while  Grat- 
tan and  Flood  were  splitting  the  air  with  their  declamations  upon 
this  subject,  if  an  enquirer  had  gone  down  into  any  Irish  harvest 
field  and  asked  the  first  reaper  he  met  his  opinion  of  the  matter, 
the  said  reaper  would  have  touched  the  heart  of  the  question 
without  losing  a  single  swing  of  his  hook.  He  would  have  said 
truly : — 

"An'  sure,  what  does  it  matter  what  England  promises? 
Won't  she  break  her  promise,  anyway,  as  soon  as  it  suits  her, 
and  she  is  able  to  ?" 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  either  Grattan  or  Flood  could 
have  seriously  thought  that  any  promise  would  bind  England,  a 
country  which  even  then  was  notorious  all  over  the  world  for 
broken  faith  and  dishonoured  treaties.  To-day  the  recital  of 
the  facts  of  this  famous  controversy  looks  like  a  poor  attempt  at 
humour,  but  in  view  of  the  tragic  setting  of  the  controversy  we 
must  say  that  it  bears  the  same  relation  to  humour  that  a  joke 
would  in  a  torture  chamber.  Grattan  and  Flood  in  this  case 
were  but  two  skilful  actors  indulging  in  oratorical  horseplay  at 
the  deathbed  of  the  murdered  hopes  of  a  people.  Were  any  other 
argument,  outside  of  the  absurdity  of  the  legal  hair-splitting  on 


48  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

both  sides,  needed  to  prove  how  little  such  a  sham  battle  really 
interested  the  great  mass  of  the  people  the  record  of  the  two 
leaders  would  suffice.  Mr.  Flood  was  not  only  known  to  be  an 
enemy  of  the  oppressed  peasantry  and  a  hater  of  the  Catholics — 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  great  mass  of  the  inhabitants  of  Ireland— 
but  he  had  also  spoken  and  voted  in  the  Irish  Parliament  in 
favour  of  a  motion  to  pay  the  expenses  of  an  army  of  10,000 
British  soldiers  to  be  sent  to  put  down  the  Revolution  in  America, 
and  Mr.  Grattan  on  his  part  jiad  accepted  a  donation  of  £50,000 
from  the  Government  for  his  "patriotic"  services,  and  afterwards 
in  excess  of  gratitude  for  this  timely  aid  repaid  the  Government 
by  betraying  and  denouncing  the  Volunteers. 

On  the  other  great  questions  of  the  day  they  were  each  occu- 
pying an  equivocal  position,  playing  fast  and  loose.  For  in- 
stance : — 

Mr.  Flood  believed  in  Democracy — amongst  Protestants,  but 
opposed  religious  freedom. 

Mr.  Grattan  believed  in  religious  freedom — amongst  property 
owners,  but  opposed  all  extension  of  the  suffrage  to  the  working 
class. 

Mr.  Flood  would  have  given  the  suffrage  to  all  Protestants, 
rich  or  poor,  and  denied  it  to  all  Catholics,  rich  or  poor. 

Mr.  Grattan  would  have  given  the  vote  to  every  man  who 
owned  property,  irrespective  of  religion,  and  he  opposed  its  exten- 
sion to  any  propertyless  man.  In  the  Irish  House  of  Commons 
he  bitterly  denounced  the  United  Irishmen,  of  whom  we  will 
treat  later,  for  proposing  universal  suffrage,  which  he  declared 
would  ruin  the  country  and  destroy  all  order. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Grattan  was  the  ideal  capitalist 
statesman;  his  spirit  was  the  spirit  of  the  bourgeoisie  incarnate. 
He  cared  more  for  the  interests  of  property  than  for  human 
rights  or  for  the  supremacy  of  any  religion. 

His  early  bent  in  that  direction  is  seen  in  a  letter  he  sent  to 
his  friend,  a  Mr.  Broome,  dated  November  3,  1767,  and  repro- 
duced by  his  son  in  the  latter's  edition  of  the  life  and  speeches 
of  his  father.  The  letter  shows  the  eminently  respectable,  anti- 
revolutionary,  religious  Mr.  Henry  Grattan  to  have  been,  at 
heart,  a  free  thinker,  free  lover,  and  epicurean  philosopher,  who 
had  early  understood  the  wisdom  of  not  allowing  these  opinions 
to  be  known  to  the  common  multitude  whom  he  aspired  to 
govern.  We  extract : — 

"You  and  I,  in  this  as  in  most  other  things,  perfectly  agree; 
we  think  marriage  is  an  artificial,  not  a  natural,  institution,  and 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY  49 

imagine  women  too  frail  a  bark  for  so  long  and  tempestuous 
a  voyage  as  that  of  life.  ...  I  have  become  an  epicurean  phi- 
losopher; consider  this  world  as  our  'ne  plus  ultra,'  and  happi- 
ness as  our  great  object  in  it.  ...  Such  a  subject  is  too  ex- 
tensive and  too  dangerous  for  a  letter;  in  our  privacy  we  shall 
dwell  upon  it  more  copiously." 

This,  be  it  noted,  is  perhaps  not  the  Grattan  of  the  poet 
Moore's  rhapsody,  but  it  is  the  real  Grattan. 

Small  wonder  that  the  Dublin  mob  stoned  this  Grattan  on 
his  return  from  England,  on  one  occasion,  after  attending  Parlia- 
ment in  London.  His  rhetoric  and  heroics  did  not  deceive  them, 
even  if  they  did  bewitch  the  historians.  His  dramatic  rising 
from  a  sick  bed  to  appear  before  the  purchased  traitors  who  sold 
their  votes  to  carry  the  Union,  in  order  to  appeal  to  them  not  to 
fulfill  their  bargain,  makes  indeed  a  fine  tableau  for  romantic 
historians  to  dwell  upon,  but  it  was  a  poor  compensation  to  the 
common  people  for  the  Volunteer's  insulted  and  betrayed,  and 
the  cause  of  popular  suffrage  opposed  and  misrepresented. 

A  further  and,  to  our  mind,  conclusive  proof  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  "Parliament  of  '82"  was  regarded  by  the  real 
Nationalists  and  progressive  thinkers  of  Ireland  is  to  be  found 
in  the  extract  below  from  the  famous  pamphlet  written  by 
Theobald  Wolfe  Tone  and  published  September,  1791,  entitled 
"An  Argument  on  Behalf  of  the  Catholics  of  Ireland."  It  is 
interesting  to  recall  that  this  biting  characterisation  of  the  "glo- 
rious revolution  of  1782"  from  the  pen  of  the  most  far-seeing 
Irishman  of  his  day,  has  been  so  little  to  the  liking  of  our  his- 
torians and  journalists  that  it  was  rigidly  boycotted  by  them  all 
until  the  present  writer  reprinted  it  in  1897,  in  Dublin,  in  a 
series  of  "  '98  Readings,"  containing  also  many  other  forgotten 
and  inconvenient  documents  of  the  same  period.  Since  then  it 
has  several  times  been  republished  exactly  as  we  reprinted  the 
extract,  but  to  judge  by  the  manner  in  which  some  of  our  friends 
still  declare  they  "stand  upon  the  constitution  of  '82"  it  has  been 
published  in  vain  for  some  people. 

WOLFE  TONE  ON  GRATTAN'S  PARLIAMENT.       « 

(Extract  from  the  famous  pamphlet,  "An  Argument  on 
BeJaalf  of  the  Catholics  of  Ireland,"  published  September,  1791.) 

"I  have  said  that  we  have  no  National  Government.  Before 
the  year  1782  it  was  not  pretended  that  we  had,  and  it  is  at 
feast  a  curious,  if  not  a  useful  speculation  to  examine  how  we 


50  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

stand  in  that  regard  now.  And  I  have  little  dread  of  being 
confuted,  when  I  assert  that  all  we  got  by  what  we  are  pleased 
to  dignify  with  the  name  of  Revolution  was  simply  the  means  of 
doing  good  according  to  law,  without  recurring  to  the  great  rule 
of  nature,  which  is  above  all  positive  Statutes ;  whether  we  have 
done  good  or  not,  why  we  have  omitted  to  do  good  is  a  serious 
question.  The  pride  of  the  nation,  the  vanity  of  individuals 
concerned,  the  moderation  of  some  honest  men,  the  corruption 
of  knaves,  I  know  may  be  alarmed  when  I  assert  that  the  revolu- 
tion of  1782  was  the  most  bungling,  imperfect  business  that  ever 
threw  ridicule  on  a  lofty  epithet,  by  assuming  it  unworthily.  It 
is  not  pleasant  to  any  Irishman  to  make  such  a  concession,  but 
it  cannot  be  helped  if  truth  will  have  it  so.  It  is  much  better 
that  we  should  know  and  feel  our  real  state,  then  delude  our- 
selves or  be  gulled  by  our  enemies  with  praises  which  we  do  not 
deserve,  or  imaginary  blessings  which  we  do  not  enjoy. 

"I  leave  to  the  admirers  of  that  era  to  vent  flowing  decla- 
mations on  its  theoretical  advantages,  and  its  visionary  glories; 
it  is  a  fine  subject,  and  peculiarly  flattering  to  my  countrymen, 
many  of  whom  were  actors,  and  almost  all  spectators  of  it. 
Be  mine  the  unpleasing  task  to  strip  it  of  its  plumage  and  its 
tinsel,  and  show  the  naked  figure.  The  operation  will  be  severe, 
but  if  properly  attended  to  may  give  us  a  strong  and  striking 
lesson  of  caution  and  of  wisdom. 

"The  Revolution  of  1782  was  a  Revolution  which  enabled 
Irishmen  to  sell  at  a  much  higher  price  their  honour,  their  integ- 
rity, and  the  interests  of  their  country ;  it  was  a  Revolution  which, 
while  at  one  stroke  it  doubled  the  value  of  every  borough-monger 
in  the  kingdom  left  three-fourths  of  our  countrymen  slaves  as  it 
found  them,  and  the  government  of  Ireland  in  the  base  and 
wicked,  and  contemptible  hands  who  had  spent  their  lives  in 
degrading  and  plundering  her;  nay,  some  of  whom  had  given 
their  last  vote  decidedly,  though  hopelessly,  against  this,  our 
famous  Revolution.  Who  of  the  veteran  enemies  of  the  country 
lost  his  place  or  his  pension?  Who  was  called  forth  to  station 
or  office  from  the  ranks  of  opposition?  Not  one.  The  power 
remained  in  the  hands  of  our  enemies,  again  to  be  exerted  for 
our  ruin,  with  this  difference,  that  formerly  we  had  our  dis- 
tresses, our  injuries,  and  our  insults  gratis  at  the  hands  of  Eng- 
land ;  but  now  we  pay  very  dearly  to  receive  the  same  with  aggra- 
vation, through  the  hands  of  Irishmen — yet  this  we  boast  of  and 
call  a  Revolution!" 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  SI 

And  so  we  close  this  chapter  on  the  Volunteers — a  chapter 
of  great  opportunities  lost,  of  popular  confidence  betrayed.  A 
few  extracts  from  some  verses  written  at  the  time  in  Dublin 
serve  as  an  epitome  of  the  times,  even  if  they  do  seem  a  little 
bitter. 

Who  aroused  the  people? 
The  rival  Harries  rose 
And  pulled  each  other's  nose. 
And  said  they  aroused  the  people. 

What  did  the  Volunteers? 

They  mustered  and  paraded 

Until  their  laurels  faded. 
This  did  the  Volunteers. 

How  died  the  Volunteers? 

The  death  that's  fit  for  slaves. 

They  slunk  into  their  graves. 
Thus  died  the  Volunteers. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  UNITED  IRISHMEN. 

"Our  freedom  must  be  had  at  all  hazards.  If  the  men  of  property 
wH\  not  help  us  they  must  fall ;  we  will  free  ourselves  by  the  aid  of  that 
large  and  respectable  class  of  the  community — the  men  of  no  property." 

— Theobald  Wolfe  Tone. 

CONTEMPORANEOUSLY  with  the  betrayal  and  fall  of  the  Volun- 
teers, Ireland  witnessed  the  rise  and  progress  of  the  Society  of 
United  Irishmen.  This  organisation  was  at  first  an  open,  peaceful 
association,  seeking  to  utilise  the  ordinary  means  of  political 
agitation  in  order  to  spread  its  propaganda  amongst  the  masses 
and  so  prepare  them  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  greater  end — 
viz.,  the  realisation  in  Ireland  of  a  republic  on  the  lines  of  that 
established  in  France  at  the  Revolution.  Afterwards,  unable  to 
maintain  its  public  character  in  face  of  the  severe  persecution 
by  the  British  Government  of  anything  savouring  in  the  least  of 
a  democratic  nature,  the  organisation  assumed  the  veil  and  meth- 
ods of  secrecy,  and  in  that  form  attained  to  such  proportions  as 
enabled  it  to  enter  into  negotiations  with  the  Revolutionary 
Directory  of  France  on  the  basis  of  an  equal  treaty  making 
national  power.  As  the  result  of  this  secret  treaty  between 
Revolutionary  France  and  Revolutionary  Ireland  against  the 
common  enemy,  aristocratic  England,  various  fleets  and  armies 
were  dispatched  from  the  Continent  to  assist  the  Irish  Republic- 
ans, but  all  of  those  expeditions  were  disastrous  in  their  outcome. 
The  first,  under  the  command  of  Grouchy  and  Hoche,  was  dis- 
persed by  a  storm,  some  of  the  ships  being  compelled  to  return 
to  France  for  repairs,  and  when  the  remainder,  including  the 
greater  part  of  the  army,  reached  Bantry  Bay,  on  the  Irish  coast, 
the  French  commander  exhibited  to  the  full  all  that  hesitation, 
indecision  and  lack  of  initiative  which  he  afterwards  was  to  show 
with  equally  fatal  results  to  Napoleon  on  the  eve  of  the  battle 
of  Waterloo.  Finally,  despite  the  desperate  protests  of  the  Irisk 

52 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  5* 

Revolutionists  on  board,  he  weighed  anchor  and  returned  t* 
France  without  striking  a  blow  or  landing  a  corporal's  guard- 
Had  he  been  a  man  equal  to  the  occasion  and  landed  his  expedi- 
tion, Ireland  would  almost  undoubtedly  have  been  separated 
from  England  and  become  mistress  of  her  own  national  destinies. 

Another  expedition,  fitted  out  by  the  Dutch  Republic  in  al- 
liance with  France,  was  detained  by  contrary  winds  in  tke 
harbour  until  the  British  fleet  had  time  to  come  upon  the  scene, 
and  then  the  Dutch  commander  chivalrously  but  foolishly  a«- 
•epted  the  British  challenge  to  fight,  and,  contending  under  ua- 
equal  and  adverse  conditions,  was  defeated. 

An  unauthorised  but  gallant  attempt  was  made  «nder  a»- 
other  French  officer,  General  Humbert,  and  this  actually  land«« 
in  Ireland,  proclaimed  the  Irish  Republic  at  Killala,  in  Coa- 
naught,  armed  large  numbers  of  the  United  Irishmen  amongst 
the  inhabitants,  and  in  conjunction  with  these  latter  fought  and 
utterly  routed  a  much  superior  British  force  at  Castlebar,  and 
penetrated  far  into  the  country  before  it  was  surrounded  and 
compelled  to  surrender  to  a  force  more  than  ten  times  its  OWR 
In  number.  The  numbers  of  the  French  expedition  in  this  «aae 
were  insufficient  for  the  purposes  of  making  a  stand  long  enougk 
to  permit  of  the  people  reaching  it  and  being  armed  and  organ- 
ised efficiently,  and  hence  its  failure.  But  had  Humbert  pos- 
sessed the  numbers  commanded  by  Grouchy,  or  Grouchy  pos- 
sessed the  dash  and  daring  of  Humbert,  the  Irish  Republic  would 
have  been  born,  for  weal  or  woe,  in  1798.  It  is  a  somewhat 
hackneyed  observation,  but  so  true  that  it  compels  repetition, 
that  the  elements  did  more  for  England  than  her  armies.  In- 
deed whether  in  conflict  with  the  French  expeditionary  force  of 
Humbert,  with  the  Presbyterians  and  Catholics  of  the  United. 
Irish  Army  under  General  Munro  in  the  North,  or  with  the  in- 
surgent  forces  of  Wicklow,  Wexford,  Kildare,  and  Dublin,  the 
British  army  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  at  any  time  justified 
its  reputation  let  alone  covered  itself  with  glory.  All  the  glory 
was,  indeed,  on  the  other  side,  as  was  also  most  of  the  humanity  s 
and  all  of  the  zeal  for  human  freedom.  The  people  were  wretch- 
edly armed,  totally  undrilled,  and  compelled  to  act  without  any 
systematic  plan  of  campaign,  because  of  the  sudden  arrest  anej 
imprisonment  of  their  leaders.  Yet  they  fought  and  defeated 
the  British  troops  on  a  score  of  battlefields,  despite  the  fact  that 
the  latter  were  thoroughly  disciplined,  splendidly  armed,  and 
directed  like  a  huge  machine  from  one  common  centre.  To  sup- 
pr«s§  th«  insurrection  in  the  counties  of  Wicklow  and  Wexford. 


54  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

alone  required  all  the  efforts  of  30,000  soldiers;  had  the  plans 
of  the  United  Irishmen  for  a  concerted  uprising  all  over  the 
island  on  a  given  date  not  failed,  the  task  of  coping  with  the 
Republican  forces  would  have  been  too  great  for  the  Govern- 
ment to  achieve.  As  it  was,  the  lack  of  means  of  communication 
prevalent  in  those  days  made  it  possible  for  the  insurrection  in 
any  one  district  to  be  almost  fought  and  lost  before  news  of  its 
course  had  penetrated  into  some  other  parts  of  the  country. 

While  the  forces  of  republicanism  and  of  despotism  were 
thus  contending  for  supremacy  upon  the  land,  the  victory  was 
being  in  reality  decided  for  the  latter  by  its  superiority  upon 
the  sea.  The  success  of  the  British  fleet  alone  made  it  possible 
to  keep  the  shores  of  England  free  of  invading  enemies,  and  to 
enable  Pitt,  the  English  Prime  Minister,  to  subsidise  and  main- 
tain the  armies  of  the  allied  despots  of  Europe  in  their  conflict 
with  the  forces  of  freedom  and  progress  throughout  the  Conti- 
nent. In  face  of  this  undoubted  fact,  it  is  somewhat  humiliating 
to  be  compelled  to  record  that  the  overwhelming  majority  of 
those  serving  upon  that  fleet  were  Irishmen.  But,  unlike  those 
serving  in  the  British  army,  the  sailors  and  marines  of  the  navy 
were  there  against  their  own  will.  During  the  coercive  proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Government  in  Ireland,  in  their  attempt  to 
compel  the  revolutionary  movement  to  explode  prematurely, 
the  authorities  suspended  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act  (the  guarantee 
of  ordinary  legal  procedure)  and  instituted  Martial  Law  and 
Free  Quarters  for  the  Military.  Under  the  latter  system  the 
soldiery  were  forced  as  boarders  upon  the  civilian  population, 
each  family  being  compelled  to  provide  food  and  lodging  for  a 
certain  number.  For  all  attempts  at  resistance,  or  all  protests 
arising  out  of  the  licentious  conduct  of  the  brutal  soldiery,  or  all 
incautious  expressions  overheard  by  them  during  their  unwelcome 
residence  in  the  houses  of  the  people,  the  authorities  had  one 
great  sovereign  remedy — viz.,  transportation  on  board  the  Brit- 
ish fleet. 

Thousands  of  young  men  were  seized  all  over  the  island  and 
marched  in  chains  to  the  various  harbours,  from  thence  taken  on 
board  the  English  men-of-war  ships,  and  there  compelled  to  fight 
for  the  Government  that  had  broken  up  their  homes,  ruined  their 
lives  and  desolated  their  country.  Whenever  any  district  was 
suspected  of  treasonable  sympathies  it  was  first  put  under  Mar- 
tial Law,  then  every  promising  young  man  was  seized  and  thrown 
into  prison  on  suspicion  and  without  trial,  and  then  those  who 
were  not  executed  or  flogged  to  the  point  of  death  were  marched 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  55 

on  board  the  fleet.  All  over  Ireland,  but  especially  in  Ulster 
and  Leinster  during  the  closing  years  of  the  18th  and  the  opening 
of  the  19th  century,  the  newspapers  and  private  letters  of  the 
times  are  full  of  records  of  such  proceedings,  telling  of  the  vast 
numbers  everywhere  sent  on  board  the  fleet  as  a  result  of  the 
wholesale  dragooning  of  the  people.  Great  numbers  of  these 
were  United  Irishmen,  sworn  to  an  effort  to  overthrow  the 
despotism  under  which  the  people  of  Ireland  suffered,  and  as  a 
result  of  their  presence  on  board  every  British  ship  soon  became 
a  nest  of  conspirators.  The  "Jack  Tars  of  Old  England"  were 
conspiring  to  destroy  the  British  Empire,  and  any  one  at  att 
acquainted  with  the  facts  relative  to  their  treatment  by  their 
superiors  and  the  authorities  cannot  wonder  at  their  acts.  The 
subject  is  not  loved  by  the  jingo  historians  of  the  English  gov- 
erning classes,  and  is  consequently  usually  complacently  lied 
about,  but,  as  a  cold  matter  of  fact,  the  "wooden  walls  of  Eng- 
land," so  beloved  of  the  poets  of  that  country,  were  in  reality 
veritable  floating  hells  to  the  poor  sailors  and  marines. 

Flogging  for  the  most  trivial  offences  was  inflicted  upon  the 
unsupported  word  of  the  most  petty  officer,  the  quarters  in  which 
the  men  were  compelled  to  sleep  and  eat  below  decks  were  of  the 
vilest  and  most  insanitary  conditions;  the  food  was  of  the  filth- 
iest, and  every  seaman  had  to  pay  tribute  to  a  greedy  quarter- 
master in  order  to  escape  actual  starvation,  and  the  whole  official 
life  of  the  ship  from  the  captain  down  to  the  youngest  midship- 
man was  based  upon  wealth  and  rank  and  breathed  hatred  and 
contempt  for  anything  belonging  to  the  lower  classes.  Mutinies 
and  attempts  at  mutiny  were  consequently  of  constant  occur- 
rence, and,  therfeore,  the  forcibly  impressed  United  Irishmen 
found  a  fertile  field  for  their  operations.  In  the  Government 
records  of  naval  court  martials  at  that  time,  the  charge  of  "ad- 
ministering the  secret  oath  of  the  United  Irishmen"  is  one  of  the 
commonest  against  the  accused,  and  the  number  of  men  shot  and; 
transported  beyond  seas  for  this  offence  is  simply  enormous;. 
English  and  Scottish  sailors  were  freely  sworn  into  the  ranks 
of  the  conspirators,  and  the  numbers  of  those  disaffected  grew 
to  such  an  extent  that  on  one  occasion — the  mutiny  of  the  Nore — 
the  sailors  were  able  to  revolt,  depose  their  officers,  and  take  com- 
mand of  the  fleet.  The  wisest  heads  amongst  them,  the  original 
United  Irishmen,  proposed  to  sail  the  ships  into  a  French  port 
and  turn  them  over  to  the  French  Government,  and  for  a  time 
they  had  great  hopes  of  accomplishing  this  purpose,  but  finally 
they  were  compelled  to  accede  to  a  proposal  to  attempt  to  win 


*  LABOU*   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

•ver  the  sailors  on  some  other  ships  in  the  port  of  London  be- 
fore sailing  to  France.  This  they  did,  and  even  threatened  to 
bombard  the  city;  but  the  delay  had  enabled  the  Government 
to  rally  its  loyal  ships,  and  also  enabled  the  "loyal"  slaves  still 
on  board  the  revolting  ships  to  play  upon  the  "patriotic"'  feelings 
of  the  waverers  among  the  British  mutineers  by  representing 
to  them  the  probability  of  their  being  confined  in  French  prisons 
instead  of  welcomed  as  allies.  In  the  end  the  admiral  and  offi- 
cers, by  promising  a  "redress  of  their  just  grievances,"  succeeded 
in  winning  over  a  sufficient  number  on  each  ship  to  paralyse 
any  chance  of  resistance,  and  the  mutiny  was  quenched.  The 
usual  tale  of  shootings,  floggings,  and  transportations  followed, 
but  the  conditions  of  life  on  board  ship  were  long  in  being 
altered  for  the  better.  It  may  be  wondered  that  men  forcibly 
impressed,  and  conspirators  against  a  tyrannical  Government 
could  fight  for  that  Government  as  did  those  unfortunates  under 
Nelson,  but  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  once  on  board  a  war 
vessel  and  that  vessel  brought  into  action  with  an  enemy  in  the 
open  sea,  there  was  no  possibility  of  escape  or  even  of  co-opera- 
tion with  the  enemy ;  the  necessity  of  self-preservation  compelled 
the  rebellious  United  Irishmen  or  the  discontented  mutineers  to 
fight  as  loyally  for  the  ship  as  did  the  soulless  slaves  amongst 
whom  they  found  themselves.  And  being  better  men,  with  more 
manhood,  they  undoubtedly  fought  better. 

In  concluding  this  brief  summary  of  this  aspect  of  that  great 
democratic  upheaval  we  desire  to  quote  from  the  "Press,"  the 
organ  of  the  United  Irishmen,  published  in  Dublin,  the  following 
short  news  item  of  the  period,  which  we  trust  will  be  found  highly 
illustrative  of  the  times  in  question,  as  well  as  a  confirmatio» 
of  the  points  we  have  set  forth  above: — 

"ROASTING. 

"Near  Castle  Ward,  a  northern  hamlet,  a  father  and  son  had 
their  heads  roasted  on  their  own  fire  to  extort  a  confession  of 
concealed  arms.  The  cause  was  that  the  lock  of  a  gun  was  found 
in  an  old  box  belonging  to  the  wife  of  the  elder  man.  It  is  a 
fact  that  the  above  old  couple  had  two  sons  serving  on  board  the 
British  fleet,  one  under  Lord  Bridgport,  the  other  under  Lord 
St.  Vincent." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
UNITED  IRISHMEN  AS  DEMOCRATS  AND  INTERNATIONALISTS. 

"Och,  Paddies,  my  hearties,  have  done  wicl  your  parties, 

Let  rain  of  all  creeds  and  professions  agree, 
If  Orange  and  Green,  min,  no  longer  were  sees,  min, 
Och,  naboclis,  how  aisy  ould  Ireland  we'd  free. 

—Jamie  Hope,  1798. 

As  we  have  pointed  out  elsewhere  ("Erin's  Hope,  the  End 
and  the  Means")  native  Irish  civilisation  disappeared  for  all 
practical  purposes  with  the  defeat  of  the  Insurrection  of  1641 
and  the  break  up  of  the  Kilkenny  Confederation.  This  great 
Insurrection  marked  the  last  appearance  of  the  Irish  clan  system, 
founded  upon  common  property  and  a  democratic  social  organisa- 
tion, as  a  rival  to  the  poliltico-social  order  of  capitalist  feudalism 
founded  upon  the  poiltical  despotism  of  the  proprietors,  and  the 
political  and  social  slavery  of  the  actual  producers. 

In  the  course  of  this  Insurrection  the  Anglo-Irish  noblemen 
who  held  Irish  tribelands  as  their  private  property  under  the 
English  feudal  system  did  indeed  throw  in  their  lot  with  the  native 
Irish  tribesmen,  but  the  union  was  never  a  cordial  one,  and  their 
presence  in  the  councils  of  the  insurgents  was  at  all  times  a  fruitful 
source  of  dissension,  treachery  and  incapacity.  Professing  to  fight 
for  Catholicity,  they  in  reality  sought  only  to  conserve  their  right 
to  the  lands  they  held  as  the  result  of  previous  confiscations  from 
the  very  men,  or  the  immediate  ancestors  of  the  men,  by  whose 
side  they  were  fighting.  They  feared  confiscation  from  the  new 
generation  of  Englishmen  if  the  insurrection  was  defeated,  and 
they  feared  confiscation  at  the  hands  of  the  insurgent  clansmen  if 
the  insurrection  was  successful. 

In  the  vaccillation  and  treachery  arising  out  of  this  state  of 
mind  can  be  found  the  only  explanation  for  the  defeat  of  this 
magnificent  movement  of  the  Irish  clans,  a  movement  which  had 
attained  to  such  proportions  that  it  held  sway  over  and  made  law« 

57 


58  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

for  the  greater  part  of  Ireland,  issued  its  own  coinage,  had  its  own 
fleet  and  issued  letters  of  marque  to  foreign  privateers,  made  treat- 
ies with  foreign  nations,  and  levied  taxes  for  the  support  of  its 
several  armies  fighting  under  its  flag.  The  fact  that  it  had  enrolled 
under  its  banner  the  representatives  of  two  different  social  sys- 
tems contained  the  germs  of  its  undoing.  Had  it  been  all  feudal 
it  would  have  succeeded  in  creating  an  independent  Ireland,  albeit 
with  a  serf  population  like  that  of  England  at  the  time;  had  it 
been  all  composed  of  the  ancient  septs  it  would  have  crushed  the 
English  power  and  erected  a  really  free  Ireland,  but  as  it  was  but  a 
hybrid  composed  of  both,  it  had  all  the  faults  of  both  and  the 
strength  of  neither,  and  hence  went  down  in  disaster.  With  its 
destruction,  and  the  following  massacres,  expropriations  and  dis- 
persion of  the  native  Irish,  the  Irish  clans  disappear  finally  from 
history. 

Out  of  these  circumstances  certain  conditions  arose  well 
worthy  of  the  study  of  every  student  who  would  understand 
modern  Irish  history. 

One  condition  which  thus  arose  was  that  the  disappearance 
of  the  clan  as  a  rallying  point  for  rebellions  and  possible  base 
of  freedom  made  it  impossible  thereafter  to  localise  an  insurrec- 
tionary effort,  or  to  give  it  a  smaller  or  more  circumscribed  aim 
than  that  of  the  Irish  Nation.  When  before  the  iron  hand  of 
Cromwell  the  Irish  clans  went  down  into  the  tomb  of  a  common 
subjection  the  only  possible  reappearance  of  the  Irish  idea  hence- 
forth lay  through  the  gateway  of  a  National  resurrection.  And 
from  that  day  forward  the  idea  of  common  property  was  des- 
tined to  recede  into  the  background  as  an  avowed  principle  of 
action,  whilst  the  energies  of  the  nation  were  engaged  in  a  slow 
and  painful  process  of  assimilating  the  social  system  of  the 
conqueror;  of  absorbing  the  principles  of  that  political  society 
based  upon  ownership  which  had  replaced  the  Irish  clan  society 
based  upon  a  common  kinship. 

Another  condition  ensuing  upon  the  total  disappearance  of 
the  Irish  Social  Order  was  the  growth  and  accentuation  of  class 
distinctions  amongst  the  conquerors.  The  indubitable  fact  that 
from  that  day  forward  the  ownership  of  what  industries  remained 
in  Ireland  was  left  in  the  hands  of  the  Protestant  element,  is  not 
to  be  explained  as  sophistical  anti-Irish  historians  have  striven 
to  explain  it,  by  asserting  that  it  arose  from  the  greater  enter- 
prise of  Protestants  as  against  Catholics;  in  reality  it  was  due 
to  the  state  of  social  and  political  outlawry  in  which  the  Catho- 
lics were  henceforth  placed  by  the  law  of  the  land.  According 


S9 

to  the  English  Constitution  as  interpreted  for  the  benefit  of 
Ireland,  the  Irish  Catholics  were  not  presumed  to  exist,  and 
hence  the  practical  impossibility  of  industrial  enterprise  being  in 
their  hands,  or  initiated  by  them.  Thus  as  the  landed  property 
of  the  Catholic  passed  into  the  ownership  of  the  Protestant  ad- 
venturers, so  also  the  manufacturing  business  of  the  nation  fell 
out  of  the  stricken  grasp  of  the  hunted  and  proscribed  "Papists'* 
into  the  clutches  of  their  successful  and  remorseless  enemies. 
Amongst  these  latter  there  were  two  elements — the  fanatical 
Protestant,  and  the  mere  adventurer  trading  on  the  religious 
enthusiasm  of  the  former.  The  latter  used  the  fanaticism  of  the 
former  in  order  to  disarm,  subjugate  and  rob  the  common  Catho- 
lic enemy,  and  having  done  so,  established  themselves  as  a  ruling 
landed  and  commercial  class,  leaving  the  Protestant  soldier  to 
his  fate  as  a  tenant  or  artisan.  Already  by  the  outbreak  of  the 
Williamite  war  in  the  generation  succeeding  Cromwell,  the  in- 
dustries of  the  North  of  Ireland  had  so  far  developed  that  the 
"Prentice  Boys"  of  Derry  were  the  dominating  factor  in  deter- 
mining the  attitude  of  that  city  towards  the  contending  English 
kings,  and  with  the  close  of  that  war  industries  developed  so 
quickly  in  the  country  as  to  become  a  menace  to  the  capitalists  of 
England,  who  accordingly  petitioned  the  King  of  England  to 
restrict  and  fetter  their  growth,  which  he  accordingly  did.  With 
the  passing  of  this  restrictive  legislation  against  Irish  industries, 
Irish  capitalism  became  discontented  and  disloyal  without,  as  a 
whole,  the  power  or  courage  to  be  revolutionary.  It  was  a  re- 
staging  of  the  ever-recurring  drama  of  English  invasion  and 
Anglo-Irish  disaffection,  with  the  usual  economic  background. 
We  have  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter  how  each  generation 
of  English  adventurers  settling  upon  the  soil  as  owners  resented 
the  coming  of  the  next  generation,  and  that  their  so-called 
Irish  patriotism  was  simply  inspired  by  the  fear  that  they  should 
be  dispossessed  in  their  turn  as  they  had  dispossessed  others. 
What  applies  to  the  landowning  "patriots"  applies  also  to  the 
manufacturers.  The  Protestant  capitalists,  with  the  help  of  the 
English,  Dutch,  and  other  adventurers  dispossessed  the  native 
Catholics  and  became  prosperous;  as  their  commerce  grew  it 
became  a  serious  rival  to  that  of  England,  and  accordingly  the 
English  capitalists  compelled  legislation  against  it,  and  imme- 
diately the  erstwhile  "English  Garrison  in  Ireland"  became  an 
Irish  "patriot"  party. 

From  time  to  time  many  weird  and  fanciful  theories  have 
been  evolved  to  account  for  the  transformation  of  English  set- 


40  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

tiers  of  one  generation  into  Irish  patriots  in  the  next.  We  hare 
been  told  it  was  the  air,  or  the  language,  or  the  religion,  or  the 
hospitality,  or  the  lovableness  of  Ireland,  and  all  the  time  th« 
naked  economic  fact,  the  material  reason,  was  as  plain  as  the 
alleged  reason  was  mythical  or  spurious.  But  there  are  none  so 
blind  as  those  who  will  not  see,  yet  the  fact  remains  that  since 
English  confiscations  of  Irish  land  ceased  no  Irish  landlord 
body  has  become  patriotic  or  rebellious,  and  since  English  re- 
pressive legislation  against  Irish  manufacturers  ceased,  Irish 
capitalists  have  remained  valuable  assets  in  the  scheme  of  Eng- 
lish rule  in  Ireland.  So  it  would  appear  that  since  the  economic 
reason  ceased  to  operate,  the  air,  and  the  language,  and  the 
religion,  and  the  hospitality,  and  the  lovableness  of  Ireland 
have  lost  all  their  seductive  capacity ;  all  their  power  to  make  an 
Irish  patriot  out  of  an  English  settler  of  the  propertied  classes. 

With  the  development  of '  this  "patriotic"  policy  amongst 
the  Irish  manufacturing  class  there  had  also  developed  a  more 
intense  and  aggressive  policy  amongst  the  humbler  class  of 
Protestants  in  town  and  country.  In  fact  in  Ireland  at  that 
time  there  were  not  only  two  nations  divided  into  Catholics  and 
non-Catholics,  but  each  of  those  two  nations  in  turn  was  divided 
into  other  two,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  The  development  of 
industry  had  drawn  large  numbers  of  the  Protestant  poor  from 
agricultural  pursuits  into  industrial  occupations,  and  the  sup- 
pression of  those  latter  in  the  interest  of  English  manufacturers 
left  them  both  landless  and  workless.  This  condition  reduced 
the  labourers  in  town  and  country  to  the  position  of  serfs.  Fierce 
competition  for  farms  and  for  jobs  enabled  the  master  class  to 
bend  both  Protestant  and  Catholic  to  its  will,  and  the  result 
was  seen  in  the  revolts  we  have  noticed  earlier  in  our  history. 
The  Protestant  workman  and  tenant  was  learning  that  the  Pope 
of  Rome  was  a  very  unreal  and  shadowy  danger  compared  with 
the  social  power  of  his  employer  or  landlord,  and  the  Catholic 
tenant  was  awakening  to  a  perception  of  the  fact  that  under  the 
new  social  order  the  Catholic  landlord  represented  the  Mass  less 
than  the  rent  roll.  The  times  were  propitious  for  a  union  of 
the  two  democracies  of  Ireland.  They  had  travelled  from  widely 
different  points  through  the  valleys  of  disillusion  and  disappoint- 
ment to  meet  at  last  by  the  unifying  waters  of  a  common  suf- 
fering. 

To  accomplish  this  union  and  make  it  a  living  force  in  the 
life  of  the  nation,  there  was  required  the  activity  of  a  revolu- 
tionist with  statesmanship  enough  to  find  a  common  point  upon 


which  the  two  elements  could  unite,  and  some  great  event  dra- 
matic enough  in  its  character  to  arrest  the  attention  of  all  and 
fire  them  with  a  common  feeling.  The  first,  the  Man,  revolu- 
tionist and  statesman,  was  found  in  the  person  of  Theobald 
Wolfe  Tone,  and  the  second,  the  Event,  in  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. Wolfe  Tone  had,  although  a  Protestant,  been  secretary 
for  the  Catholic  Committee  for  some  time,  and  in  that  capacity 
had  written  the  pamphlet  quoted  in  a  previous  chapter,  but 
eventually  had  become  convinced  that  the  time  had  come  for 
more  comprehensive  and  drastic  measures  than  that  Committee 
could  possibly  initiate  even  were  it  willing  to  do  so.  The  French 
Revolution  operated  alike  upon  the  minds  of  the  Catholic  and 
Protestant  democracies  to  demonstrate  this  fact  and  prepare 
them  for  the  reception  of  it.  The  Protestant  workers  saw  in  it 
a  revolution  of  a  great  Catholic  nation,  and  hence  wavered  in 
the  belief  so  insidiously  instilled  into  them  that  Catholics  were 
willing  slaves  of  despotism;  and  the  Catholics  saw  in  it  a  great 
manifestation  of  popular  power — a  revolution  of  the  people 
against  the  aristocracy,  and,  therefore,  ceased  to  believe  that 
aristocratic  leadership  was  necessary  for  their  salvation. 

Seizing  this  propitious  moment,  Tone  and  his  associates 
proposed  the  formation  of  a  society  of  men  of  every  creed  for 
the  purpose  of  securing  an  equal  representation  of  all  the  people 
in  Parliament. 

This  was,  as  Tone's  later  words  and  works  amply  prove, 
intended  solely  as  a  means  of  unity  knowing  well  the  nature  of 
the  times  and  the  political  oligarchy  in  power  he  realised  that 
such  a  demand  would  be  resisted  with  all  the  power  of  govern- 
ment, but  he  wisely  calculated  that  such  resistance  to  a  popular 
demand,  would  tend  to  make  closer  and  more  enduring  trie 
union  of  the  democracy  irrespective  of  religion.  And  that  Tone 
had  no  illusions  about  the  value  of  the  aristocracy  is  proven  in 
scores  of  passages  in  his  autobiography.  We  quote  one,  proving 
alike  this  point,  and  also  the  determining  effect  of  the  French 
Revolution  upon  the  popular  mind  in  Ireland : — 

"As  the  Revolution  advanced,  and  as  events  expanded  them- 
selves, the  public  spirit  of  Ireland  rose  with  a  rapid  acceleration. 
The  fears  and  animosities  of  the  aristocracy  rose  in  the  same  or 
a  still  higher  proportion.  In  a  little  time  the  French  Revolution 
became  the  test  of  every  man's  political  creed,  and  the  nation  was 
fairly  divided  into  two  great  parties — the  aristocrats  and  demo- 
crats (borrowed  from  France)  who  have  ever  since  been  meas- 
uring each  other's  strength  and  carrying  on  a  kind  of  smothered 


$2  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

war,  which  the  course  of  events,  it  is  highly  probable,  may  soon 
call  into  energy  and  action." 

It  will  be  thus  seen  that  Tone  built  up  his  hopes  upon  a 
successful  prosecution  of  a  Class  War,  although  those  who  pre- 
tend to  imitate  him  today  raise  up  their  hands  in  holy  horror 
at  the  mere  mention  of  the  phrase. 

The  political  wisdom  of  using  a  demand  for  equal  represen- 
tation as  a  rallying  cry  for  the  democracy  of  Ireland  is  evidenced 
by  a  study  of  the  state  of  the  suffrage  at  that  time.  In  an  Address 
from  the  United  Irishmen  of  Dublin  to  the  English  Society  of 
the  Friends  of  the  People,  dated  Dublin,  October  26,  1792,  we 
find  the  following  description  of  the  state  of  representation: — 

"The  state  of  Protestant  representation  is  as  follows: — 
Seventeen  boroughs  have  no  resident  elector;  sixteen  have  but 
one ;  ninety  have  thirteen  electors  each ;  ninety  persons  return 
for  106  rural  boroughs — that  is  212  members  out  of  300 — the 
whole  number ;  fifty- four  members  are  returned  by  five  noblemen 
and  four  bishops;  and  borough  influence  has  given  landlords 
such  power  in  the  counties  as  make  them  boroughs  also  .  .  .  yet 
the  Majesty  of  the  People  is  still  quoted  with  affected  veneration ; 
and  if  the  crown  be  ostensibly  placed  in  a  part  of  the  Protestant 
portion  it  is  placed  in  mockery,  for  it  is  encircled  with  thorns." 

"With  regard  to  the  Catholics,  the  following  is  the  simple 
and  sorrowful  fact: — Three  millions,  every  one  of  whom  has  an 
interest  in  the  State,  and  collectively  give  it  its  value,  are  taxed 
without  being  represented,  and  bound  by  laws  to  which  they  have 
not  given  consent." 

The  above  Address,  which  is  signed  by  Thomas  Wright  as 
secretary,  contains  one  sentence  which  certain  Socialists  and 
others  in  Ireland  and  England  might  well  study  to  advantage, 
and  is  also  useful  in  illustrating  the  thought  of  the  time.  It  is 
as  follows : — 

"As  to  any  union  between  the  two  islands,  believe  us  when 
we  assert  that  our  union  rests  upon  our  mutual  independence. 
We  shall  love  each  other  if  we  be  left  to  ourselves.  It  is  the 
union  of  mind  which  ought  to  bind  these  nations  together." 

This,  then,  was  the  situation  in  which  the  Society  of  United 
Irishmen  was  born.  That  society  was  initiated  and  conducted 
by  men  who  realised  the  importance  of  all  those  principles  of 
action  upon  which  latter  day  Irish  revolutionists  have  turned 
their  backs.  Consequently  it  was  as  effective  in  uniting  the 
democracy  of  Ireland  as  the  "patriots"  of  our  day  have  been  in 
keeping  it  separated  into  warring  religious  factions.  Jt  under- 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  63 

stood  that  the  aristocracy  was  necessarily  hostile  to  the  princi- 
ple and  practice  of  Freedom ;  it  understood  that  the  Irish  fight  for 
liberty  was  but  a  part  of  the  world-wide  upward  march  of  the 
human  race,  and  hence  allied  itself  with  the  revolutionists  of 
Great  Britain  as  well  as  with  those  of  France,  and  it  said  little 
about  ancient  glories,  and  much  about  modern  misery.  The 
Report  of  the  Secret  Committee  of  the  House  of  Lords  reprinted 
in  full  the  Secret  Manifesto  to  the  Friends  of  Freedom  in  Ireland, 
circulated  throughout  the  country  by  Wolfe  Tone  and  his  asso- 
ciates, in  the  month  of  June,  1791,  and  as  this  contains  the  draft 
of  the  designs  of  the  revolutionary  association  known  to  history 
as  the  Society  of  United  Irishmen,  we  quote  a  few  passages  in 
support  of  our  contentions,  and  to  show  the  democratic  views 
of  its  founders.  The  manifesto  is  supposed  to  have  been  written 
by  Wolfe  Tone  in  collaboration  with  Samuel  Neilson  and  others : 

"It  is  by  wandering  from  the  few  plain  and  simple  principles 
of  Political  Faith  that  our  politics,  like  our  religion,  has  become 
preaching,  not  practice ;  words  not  works.  A  society  such  as 
this  will  disclaim  those  party  appellations  which  seems  to  pale 
the  human  hearts  with  petty  compartments,  and  parcel  out  into 
sects  and  sections  common  sense,  common  honesty,  and  com- 
mon weal. 

"It  will  not  be  an  aristocracy,  affecting  the  language  of 
patriotism,  the  rival  of  despotism  for  its  own  sake,  not  its 
irreconcilable  enemy  for  the  sake  of  us  all.  It  will  not,  by  views 
merely  retrospective,  stop  the  march  of  mankind  or  force  them 
back  into  the  lanes  and  alleys  of  their  ancestors. 

"This  society  is  likely  to  be  a  means  the  most  powerful  for 
the  promotion  of  a  great  end.  What  end?  The  Rights  of  Man 
in  Ireland.  The  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  numbers  in 
this  island,  the  inherent  and  indefeasible  claims  of  every  free 
nation  to  rest  in  this  nation — the  will  and  the  power  to  be  happy 
to  pursue  the  common  weal  as  an  individual  pursues  his  private 
welfare,  and  to  stand  in  insulated  independence,  an  imperatorial 
people. 

'"The  greatest  happiness  of  the  Greatest  Number. — On  the 
rock  of  this  principle  let  this  society  rest;  by  this  let  it  judge 
and  determine  every  political  question,  and  whatever  is  necessary 
for  this  end  let  it  not  be  accounted  hazardous,  but  rather  our 
interest,  our  duty,  our  glory  and  our  common  religion.  The 
Rights  of  Man  are  the  Rights  of  God,  and  to  vindicate  the  one 
is  to  maintain  the  other.  We  must  be  free  in  order  to  serve 
Him  whose  service  is  perfect  freedom. 


*4  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

"The  external  business  of  this  society  will  be — first,  publica- 
tion, in  order  to  propagate  their  principles  and  effectuate  their 
ends.  Second,  communications  with  the  different  towns  to  be 
assiduously  kept  up  and  every  exertion  used  to  accomplish  a 
National  Convention  of  the  People  of  Ireland,  who  may  profit 
by  past  errors  and  by  many  unexpected  circumstances  which  have 
happened  since  this  last  meeting.  Third,  communications  with 
similar  societies  abroad — as  the  Jacobin  Club  of  Paris,  the  Revo- 
lutionary Society  in  England,  the  Committee  for  Reform  in  Scot- 
land. Let  the  nations  go  abreast.  Let  the  interchange  of  senti- 
ments among  mankind  concerning  the  Rights  of  Man  be  as 
immediate  as  possible. 

"When  the  aristocracy  come  fonvard,  the  people  fall  back- 
ward; when  the  people  come  forward,  the  aristocrasy,  fearful 
of  being  left  behind,  insinuate  themselves  into  our  ranks  and  rise 
into  timid  leaders  or  treacherous  auxiliaries.  They  mean  to 
make  us  their  instruments;  let  us  rather  make  them  our  instru- 
ments. One  of  the  two  must  happen.  The  people  must  serve 
the  party,  or  the  party  must  emerge  in  the  mightiness  of  the 
people,  and  Hercules  will  then  lean  upon  his  club.  On  the  14th 
of  July,  the  day  which  shall  ever  commemorate  the  French  Revo- 
lution, let  this  society  pour  out  their  first  libation  to  European 
liberty,  eventually  the  liberty  of  the  world,  and  with  their  hands 
joined  in  each  other,  and  their  eyes  raised  to  Heaven,  in  His 
presence,  who  breathed  into  them  an  ever-living  soul,  let  them 
swear  to  maintain  the  rights  and  prerogatives  of  their  nature 
as  men,  and  the  right  and  prerogative  of  Ireland  as  an  indepen- 
dent people. 

"  'Dieu  et  mon  Droit'  (God  and  my  right)  is  the  motto  of 
kings.  'Dieu  et  la  liberte'  (God  and  liberty),  exclaimed  Voltaire 
when  he  beheld  Franklin,  his  fellow  citizen  of  the  world.  'Dieu 
et  nos  Droits'  (God  and  our  rights),  let  every  Irishman  cry 
aloud  to  each  other  the  cry  of  mercy,  of  justice,  and  of  victory." 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  in  modern  Socialist  literature  any- 
thing more  broadly  International  in  its  scope  and  aims,  more 
definitely  of  a  class  character  in  its  methods,  or  more  avowedly 
democratic  in  its  nature  than  this  manifesto,  yet,  although  it 
reveals  the  inspiration  and  methods  of  a  revolutionist  acknowl- 
edged to  be  the  most  successful  organiser  of  revolt  in  Ireland 
since  the  days  of  Rory  O'More,  all  his  present-day  professed  fol- 
lowers constantly  trample  upon  and  repudiate  every  one  of  these 
principles  and  reject  them  as  a  possible  guide  to  their  political 
activity.  The  Irish  Socialist  alone  is  in  line  with  the  thought  of 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  65 

this  revolutionary  apostle  of  the  United  Irishmen. 

The  above  quoted  manifesto  was  circulated  in  June,  1791, 
and  in  July  of  the  same  year  the  townspeople  and  volunteer  so- 
cieties of  Belfast  met  to  celebrate  the  anniversary  of  the  Fall  of 
the  Bastile,  a  celebration  recommended  by  the  framer  of  the 
manifesto  as  a  means  of  educating  and  uniting  the  real  people 
of  Ireland — the  producers.  From  the  Dublin  Chronicle  af  the 
time  we  quote  the  following  passages  from  the  "Declaration  of 
the  Volunteers  and  Inhabitants  at  Large  of  the  town  and  neigh- 
bourhood of  Belfast  on  the  subject  of  the  French  Revolution." 
As  Belfast  was  then  the  hot-bed  of  revolutionary  ideas  in  Ire- 
land, and  became  the  seat  of  the  first  society  of  United  Irishmen, 
and  as  all  the  other  branches  of  the  society  were  founded  upon 
this  original,  it  will  repay  to  study  the  sentiments  here  expressed, 

"Unanimously  agreed  to  at  an  Assembly  held  by  public 
notice  on  the  14th  of  July,  1791. 

"COLONEL  SHARMAN,  President. 

"Neither  on  marble,  nor  brass,  can  the  rights  and  duties  of 
men  be  so  durably  registered  as  on  their  memories  and  on  their 
hearts.  We  therefore  meet  this  day  to  commemorate  the  French 
Revolution,  that  the  remembrance  of  this  great  event  may  sink 
deeply  into  our  hearts,  warmed  not  merely  with  the  fellow  feel- 
ing of  townsmen,  but  with  a  sympathy  which  binds  us  to  the 
human  race  in  a  brotherhood  of  interest,  of  duty  and  affection. 

"Here  we  take  our  stand,  and  if  we  be  asked  what  the  French 
Revolution  is  to  us,  we  answer  much.  Much  as  men.  It  is  good 
for  human  nature  that  the  grass  grows  where  the  Bastile  stood. 
We  do  rejoice  at  an  event  that  means  the  breaking  up  of  civil  and 
religious  bondage,  when  we  behold  this  misshapen  pile  of  abuses, 
cemented  merely  by  custom,  and  raised  upon  the  ignorance  of 
a  prostrate  people,  tottering  to  its  base,  to  the  very  level  of 
equal  liberty  and  common  wealth.  We  do  really  rejoice  in  this 
resurrection  of  human  nature,  and  we  congratulate  our  brother 
man  coming  forth  from  the  vaults  of  ingenious  torture  and  from 
the  cave  of  death.  We  do  congratulate  the  Christian  world  that 
there  is  in  it  one  great  nation  which  has  renounced  all  ideas 
of  conquest,  and  has  published  the  first  glorious  manifesto  of 
humanity,  of  union,  and  of  peace.  In  return  we  pray  to.  God 
that  peace  may  rest  in  their  land,  and  that  it  may  never  be  in 
power  of  royalty,  nobility,  or  a  priesthood  to  disturb  the  har- 
mony of  a  good  people,  consulting  about  those  laws  which  must 
ensure  their  own  happiness  and  that  of  unborn  millions. 

"Go  on,  then — great  and  gallant  people;  to  practise  the  sub- 


66  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

lime  philosophy  of  your  legislation,  to  force  applause  from  na- 
tions least  disposed  to  do  you  justice,  and  not  by  conquest  but 
by  the  omnipotence  of  reason  to  convert  and  liberate  the  world — 
a  world  whose  eyes  are  fixed  on  you,  whose  heart  is  with  you, 
who  talks  of  you  with  all  her  tongues ;  you  are  in  very  truth  the 
hope  of  this  world,  of  all  except  a  few  men  in  a  few  cabinets 
who  thought  the  human  race  belonged  to  them,  not  them  to  the 
human  race ;  but  now  are  taught  by  awful  example,  and  tremble, 
and  dare  not  confide  in  armies  arrayed  against  you  and  your 
cause," 

Thus  spoke  Belfast.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  ideas  of  the 
publishers  of  the  secret  manifesto  were  striking  a  responsive 
chord  in  the  hearts  of  the  people.  A  series  of  meetings  of  the 
Dublin  Volunteer  Corps  were  held  in  October  of  the  same  year, 
ostensibly  to  denounce  a  government  proclamation  offering  a 
reward  for  the  apprehension  of  Catholics  under  arms,  but  in 
reality  to  discuss  the  political  situation.  The  nature  of  the  con- 
clusions arrived  at  may  be  judged  by  a  final  paragraph  in  the 
resolution,  passed  23rd  October,  1791,  and  signed  amongst 
others  by  James  Napper  Tandy,  on  behalf  of  the  Liberty  Corps 
of  Artillery.  It  reads : — 

"While  we  admire  the  philanthropy  of  that  great  and  en- 
lightened nation,  who  have  set  an  example  to  mankind,  both  of 
polictial  and  religious  wisdom,  we  cannot  but  lament  that  distinc- 
tions, injurious  to  both,  have  too  long  disgraced  the  name  of 
Irishmen ;  and  we  most  fervently  wish  that  our  animosities  were 
entombed  with  the  bones  of  our  ancestors ;  and  that  we  and  our 
Roman  Catholic  brethren  would  unite  like  citizens,  and  claim  the 
Rights  of  Man." 

This  was  in  October.  In  the  same  month  Wolfe  Tone  went 
to  Belfast  on  the  invitation  of  one  of  the  advanced  Volunteer 
Clubs,  and  formed  the  first  club  of  United  Irishmen.  Returning 
to  Dublin  he  organised  another.  From  the  minutes  of  the  Inaug- 
uration Meeting  of  this  First  Dublin  Society  of  United  Irishmen, 
held  at  the  Eagle  Inn,  Eustace  Street,  9th  November,  1791,  we 
make  the  following  extracts,  which  speak  for  the  principles  of 
the  original  members  of  those  two  parent  clubs  of  a  society 
destined  in  a  short  time  to  cover  all  Ireland,  and  to  set  in  motion 
the  fleets  of  two  foreign  auxiliaries. 

''For  the  attainment  then  of  this  great  and  important  ob- 
ject— the  removal  of  absurd  and  ruinous  distinctions — and  for 
jjromoting  a  complete  coalition  of  the  people,  a  club  has  been 
formed  composed  of  all  religious  persuasions  who  have  adopted 


LABOUR  IN   IRISH  HISTORY  67 

for  their  name  The  Society  of  United  Irishmen  of  Dublin,  and 
have  taken  as  their  declaration  that  of  a  similar  society  in  Belfast, 
which  is  as  follows : — 

"In  the  present  great  era  of  reform  when  unjust  govern- 
ments are  falling  in  every  quarter  of  Europe,  when  religious  pros- 
ecution is  compelled  to  abjure  her  tyranny  over  conscience; 
when  the  Rights  of  Man  are  ascertained  in  Theory  and  that 
Theory  substantiated  by  Practice;  when  antiquity  can  no  longer 
defend  absurd  and  oppressive  forms  against  the  common  sense 
and  common  interests  of  mankind;  when  all  government  is  ac- 
knowledged to  originate  from  the  people,  and  to  be  so  far  only 
obligatory  as  it  protects  their  rights  and  promotes  their  welfare; 
we  think  it  our  duty  as  Irishmen  to  come  forward  and  state  what 
we  feel  to  be  our  heavy  grievance,  and  what  we  know  to  be  its 
effectual  remedy. 

"We  have  no  National  Government;  we  are  ruled  by  Eng- 
lishmen and  the  servants  of  Englishmen,  whose  object  is  the 
interest  of  another  country;  whose  instrument  is  corruption; 
whose  strength  is  the  weakness  of  Ireland;  and  these  men  have 
the  whole  of  the  power  and  patronage  of  the  country  as  means 
to  seduce  and  subdue  the  honesty  and  the  spirit  of  her  representa- 
tives in  the  legislature.  Such  an  extrinsic  power,  acting  with 
uniform  force  in  a  direction  too  frequently  opposite  to  the  true 
line  of  our  obvious  interests,  can  be  resisted  with  effect  solely 
by  unanimity,  decision,  and  spirit  in  the  people,  qualities  which 
may  be  exerted  most  legally,  constitutionally,  and  efficaciously 
by  that  great  measure  essential  to  the  prosperity  and  freedom 
of  Ireland — an  equal  Representation  of  all  the  People  in  Par- 
liament. .  .  . 

"We  have  gone  to  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  root  of  the 
evil;  we  have  stated  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  remedy — with 
a  Parliament  thus  reformed  everything  is  easy ;  without  it  nothing 
can  be  done." 

Here  we  have  a  plan  of  campaign  indicated  on  the  lines 
of  those  afterwards  followed  so  successfully  by  the  Socialists  of 
Europe — a  revolutionary  party  openly  declaring  their  revolution- 
ary sympathies  but  limiting  their  first  demand  to  a  popular  meas- 
ure such  as  would  enfranchise  the  masses  upon  whose  support 
their  ultimate  success  must  rest.  No  one  can  read  the  manifesto 
we  have  just  quoted  without  realising  that  these  men  aimed  at 
nothing  less  than  a  social  and  political  revolution,  such  as  had 
been  accomplished  in  France,  or  even  greater,  because  the  French 
Revolution  did  not  enfranchise  all  the  people,  but  made  a  dis- 


38  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

tmction  between  active  and  passive  citizens,  taxpayers  and  non- 
taxpayers.  Nor  yet  can  an  impartial  student  fail  to  realise  that 
it  was  just  this  daring  aim  that  was  the  secret  of  their  success  as 
organisers,  as  it  is  the  secret  of  the  political  effectiveness  of  the 
Socialists  of  our  day.  Nothing  less  would  have  succeeded  in 
causing  Protestant  and  Catholic  masses  to  shake  hands  over  the 
bloody  chasm  of  religious  hatreds,  nothing  less  will  accomplish 
the  same  result  in  our  day  among  the  Irish  workers.  It  must  be 
related  to  the  credit  of  the  leaders  of  the  United  Irishmen  that 
they  remained  true  to  their  principles  even  when  moderation 
might  have  secured  a  mitigation  of  their  lot.  When  exmained 
before  the  Secret  Committee  of  the  House  of  Lords  at  the 
prison  of  Fort  George,  Scotland,  Thomas  Addis  Emmet  did  not 
hesitate  to  tell  his  inquisitors  that  if  successful  they  would  have 
inaugurated  a  very  different  social  system  than  that  which  then 
prevailed. 

Few  movements  in  history  have  been  more  consistently  mis- 
represented by  open  enemies  and  professed  admirers  than  that 
of  the  United  Irishmen.    The  suggestio  falso,  and  the  suppressio 
veri  have  been  remorselessly  used.    The  middle  class  "patriotic" 
historians,  orators,  and  journalists  of  Ireland  have  ever  vied  with 
one  another  in  enthusiastic  descriptions  of  their  military  exploits 
on  land  and  sea,  their  hair-breadth  escapes  and  heroic  martyr- 
dom, but  have  resolutely  suppressed  or  distorted  their  writings, 
songs  and  manifestos.    We  have  striven  to  reverse  the  process, 
to  give  publicity  to  their  literature,  believing  ^hat  this  literature 
reveals  the  men  better  than  any  partisan  biographer  can  do.    Dr. 
Madden,  a  most  painstaking  and  conscientious  biographer,  de- 
clares in  his  volume  of  "The  Literary  Remains  of  the  United 
Irishmen,"  that  he  has  suppressed  many  of  their  productions 
because  of  their  "trashy"  republican  and  irreligious  tendencies. 
This  is  to  be  regretted,  as  it  places  upon  other  biographers 
and  historians  the  trouble  (a  thousand  times  more  difficult  now) 
of  searching  for  anew  and  re-collecting  the  literary  material  from 
which  to  build  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  work  of  those  pio- 
neers of  democracy  in  Ireland.     And  as  Irish  men  and  women 
progress  to  a  truer  appreciation  of  correct  social  and  political 
principles,   perhaps   it   will   be    found   possible   to   say,    without 
being  in  the  least  degree  blasphemous  or  irreverent,  that  the 
atones   rejected  by  the  builders   of  the  past  have  become  the 
corner-stones  of  the  edifice. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
THE  EMMET  CONSPIRACY. 

"The  Rich  always  betray  the  Poor." — Henry  Joy  M'Cracken's  Letter 
to  his  sister,  1798. 

THE  Emmet  Conspiracy — the  aftermath  of  the  United  Irisfe 
movement  of  1798,  was  even  more  distinctly  democratic,  inter- 
national and  popular  in  its  sympathies  and  affiliations  than  the 
latter.  The  treacherous  betrayal  of  the  United  Irish  chiefs  into 
the  hands  of  the  Government  had  removed  from  the  scene  of 
action  practically  all  the  middle  class  supporters  of  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  and  left  the  rank  and  file  to  their  own  re- 
sources and  to  consult  their  own  inclinations.  It  was  accordingly 
with  these  humble  workers  in  town  and  country  Emmet  had  to 
deal  when  he  essayed  to  reorganise  the  scattered  forces  of  free- 
dom for  a  fresh  grapple  with  the  despotic  power  of  the  class 
government  then  ruling  Ireland  and  England.  All  students  who 
have  investigated  the  matter  are  as  one  in  conceding  that  Em- 
met's conspiracy  was  more  of  a  working  class  character  than  its 
predecessors.  Indeed  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  this  conspiracy^ 
widespread  throughout  Ireland,  England,  and  France,  should- 
have  progressed  so  rapidly,  and  with  such  elaborate  preparations 
for  armed  revolt,  amongst  the  poorer  section  of  the  populace 
right  up  to  within  a  short  time  of  the  date  for  the  projected 
rising,  without  the  alert  English  Government  or  its  Irish  Execu- 
tive being  able  to  inform  themselves  of  the  matter. 

Probably  the  proletarian  character  of  the  movement — the 
fact  that  it  was  recruited  principally  amongst  the  working  class 
of  Dublin  and  other  large  centres,  as  well  as  amongst  the  labour- 
ing element  of  the  country  districts,  was  the  real  reason  why  it 
was  not  so  prolific  of  traitors  as  its  forerunner.  After  the  con- 
spiracy had  fallen  through,  the  Government,  of  course,  pretended 
that  it  had  known  of  it  all  along — indeed  the  British  Government 

69 


70  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

in  Ireland  always  pretends  to  be  omniscient — but  nothing  devel- 
oped during  the  trial  of  Emmet  to  justify  such  a  claim.  Nor 
has  anything  developed  since,  although  searchers  of  the  Gov- 
ernment documents  of  the  time,  the  Castlereagh  papers,  the 
records  of  the  secret  service  and  other  sources  of  information 
have  been  able  to  reveal  in  their  true  colours  of  infamy  many  who 
had  posed  in  the  limelight  for  more  than  a  generation  as  whole- 
souled  patriots  and  reformers.  Thus  Leonard  McNaliy,  barrister- 
at-law,  and  legal  defender  of  the  United  Irishmen,  who  acted 
for  all  the  chiefs  of  that  body  at  their  trials,  'was  one  of  the 
Catholic  Committee  and  elected  as  Catholic  delegate  to  England 
in  1811,  looked  up  to  and  revered  as  a  fearless  advocate  of 
Catholic  rights,  and  champion  of  persecuted  Nationalists,  was 
discovered  to  have  been  all  the  time  in  the  pay  of  the  Govern- 
ment, acting  the  loathsome  part  of  an  informer,  and  systemat- 
ically betraying  to  the  Government  the  inmost  secrets  of  the 
men  whose  cause  he  was  pretending  to  champion  in  the  court- 
room. But  this  secret  was  kept  for  half  a  century.  Francis 
Magan,  another  worthy,  received  a  secret  pension  of  £20  per 
year  from  the  Government  for  the  betrayal  of  the  hiding-place 
of  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald,  and  lived  and  died  revered  as  an 
honest,  unoffending  citizen.  A  body  of  the  Royal  Meath  Militia 
stationed  at  Mallow,  County  Cork,  had  conspired  to  seize  the 
artillery  stationed  there,  and  with  that  valuable  arm  join  the 
insurgents  in  a  body.  One  of  their  number  mentioned  the  plot 
in  his  confessions  to  the  Rev.  Thomas  Barry,  parish  priest  of 
Mallow,  and  was  by  him  ordered  to  reveal  it  to  the  military 
authorities.  The  leader  of  the  plotters,  Sergeant  Beatty,  seeing 
by  the  precautions  suddenly  taken  that  the  plot  was  discovered, 
fought  his  way  out  of  the  barracks  with  nineteen  men,  but  was 
subsequently  captured  and  hanged  in  Dublin.  Father  Barry  (how 
ironical  the  title  sounds)  received  £100  per  year  pension  from  the 
Government,  and  drew  this  blood-money  in  secret  for  a  lifetime 
before  his  crime  was  discovered.  It  is  recorded  that  the  great 
Daniel  O'Connell  at  one  time  turned  pale  when  shown  a  receipt 
for  this  blood-money  signed  by  Father  Barry,  and  yet  it  is  known 
now  that  O'Connell  "himself,  as  a  member  of  the  lawyers'  Yeom- 
anry Corps  of  Dublin,  was  turned  out  on  duty  to  serve  against 
the  rebels  on  the  night  of  Emmet's  insurrection,  and  in  Daunt's 
"Recollections"  he  relates  that  O'Connell  pointed  out  to  him  a 
house  in  James's  Street  which  he  (O'Connell)  had  searched  for 
"Croppies"  (patriots). 

The  present  writer  has  seen  in  Derrynane,  O'Connell's  an- 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  71 

cestral  home  in  County  Kerry,  a  brass-mounted  blunderbuss, 
which  we  were  assured  by  a  member  of  the  family  was  procured 
at  a  house  in  James's  Street,  Dublin,  by  O'Connell  from  the 
owner,  a  follower  of  Emmet,  a  remark  that  recalled  to  our  mind 
that  "search  for  Croppies"  of  which  Daunt  speaks,  and  gave  rise 
to  a  conjecture  that  possibly  the  blunderbuss  in  question  owed 
its  presence  in  Derrynane  to  that  memorable  raid. 

But  although  latter-day  investigators  have  brought  to  the 
light  of  day  many  such  treasons  against  liberty  as  those  recorded, 
and  have  revealed  depths  of  corruption  in  quarters  long  unsus- 
pected, nothing  has  yet  been  demonstrated  to  dim  the  glory  or 
sully  the  name  of  the  men  and  women  of  the  working  class  who 
carried  the  dangerous  secret  of  Emmet's  conspiracy  and  guarded 
it  so  well  and  faithfully  to  the  end.  It  must  be  remembered  in 
this  connection  that  at  that  period  the  open  organisation  of  la- 
bourers for  any  purpose  was  against  the  law,  that  consequently' 
the  trade  unions  which  then  flourished  amongst  the  working  class 
were  all  illegal  organisations  whose  members  were  in  constant  , 
danger  of  arrest  and  transportation  for  the  crime  of  organising, 
and  that,  therefore,  a  proposal  to  subvert  the  oppressive  govern- 
ing class  and  establish  a  republic  founded  upon  the  votes  of  all 
citizens,  as  Emmet  planned,  was  one  likely  to  appeal  alike  to  the 
material  requirements  and  imagination  of  the  Irish  toilers.  And 
as  they  were  already  trained  to  secrecy  in  organisation  they 
naturally  made  splendid  material  for  the  revolutionary  movement. 
It  is  significant  that  the  only  serious  fight  on  the  night  of  the 
ill-fated  insurrection  took  place  in  the  Coombe  district  of  the 
Liberties  of  Dublin,  a  quarter  inhabited  exclusively  by  weavers, 
tanners,  and  shoemakers,  the  best  organised  trades  in  the  city, 
and  that  a  force  of  Wicklow  men  brought  into  Dublin  by  Michael 
Dwyer,  the  insurgent  chieftain,  were  sheltered  on  the  quays 
amongst  the  dock  labourers  and  eventually  enabled  to  return  home 
without  any  traitor  betraying  their  whereabouts  to  the  numerous 
Government  spies  overrunning  the  city. 

The  ripeness  of  the  labouring  element  in  the  country  at 
large  for  any  movement  that  held  out  hopes  of  social  emancipa- 
tion may  be  gauged  by  the  fact  that  a  partial  rebellion  had 
already  taken  place  in  1802  in  Limerick,  Water  ford,  and  Tip- 
perary,  where,  according  to  Haverty's  "History  of  Ireland/' 
"the  alleged  grounds  for  rebellion  were  the  dearness  of  the 
potatoes,"  and  "the  right  of  the  old  tenants  to  retain  possession 
of  their  farms." 

Such  were  the  domestic  materials  upon  which  the  conspiracy 


72  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

of  Emmet  rested — working  class  elements  fired  with  the  hope 
of  political  and  social  emancipation.  Abroad  he  sought  alliance 
with  the  French  Republic — the  incarnation  of  the  political,  social, 
and  religious  unrest  and  revolution  of  the  age,  and  in  Great 
Britain  he  formed  alliance  with  the  "Sassenach"  reformers  who 
were  conspiring  to  overthrow  the  English  monarchy.  On  Nov- 
ember 13,  1802,  one  Colonel  Despard,  with  nineteen  others,  was 
arrested  in  London  charged  with  the  crime  of  high  treason ;  they 
were  tried  on  the  charge  of  conspiracy  to  murder  the  King; 
although  no  evidence  in  support  of  such  a  charge  was  forthcom- 
ing, Despard  and  seven  others  were  hanged.  According  to  the 
Castlereagh  papers  Emmet  and  Despard  were  preparing  for  a 
simultaneous,  uprising,  a  certain  William  Dowdall,  of  Dublin, 
described  as  one  of  the  most  determined  of  the  society  of  United 
Irishmen,  being  the  confidential  agent  who  acted  for  both.  Mr. 
W.  J.  Fitzpatrick,  in  his  books  "Secret  Service  Under  Pitt,"  and 
"The  Sham  Squire,"  brings  out  many  of  these  facts  as  a  result 
of  an  extensive  and  scholarly  investigation  of  Government  rec- 
ords and  the  papers  of  private  families,  yet,  although  these  books 
were  published  half  a  century  ago,  every  recurring  Emmet  an- 
niversary continues  to  bring  us  its  crop  of  orators  who  know  all 
about  Emmet's  martyrdom,  and  nothing  about  his  principles. 
Even  some  of  the  more  sympathetic  of  his  panegyrists  do  not 
seem  to  realise  that  they  dim  his  glory  when  they  represent  him 
as  the  victim  of  a  protest  against  an  injustice  local  to  Ireland 
instead  of  as  an  Irish  apostle  of  a  world-wide  movement  for 
liberty,  equality  and  fraternity.  Yet  this  latter  was  indeed  the 
character  and  position  of  Emmet,  and  as  such  the  democracy  of 
the  future  will  revere  him.  He  fully  shared  in  the  international 
sympathies  of  that  Dublin  Society  of  United  Irishmen  who  had 
elected  a  Scottish  reformer  to  be  a  United  Irishman  upon  hear- 
ing that  the  Government  had  sentenced  him  to  transportation  for 
attending  a  reform  convention  in  Edinburgh.  He  believed  in  the 
brotherhood  of  the  oppressed  and  in  the  community  of  free  na- 
tions, and  died  for  his  ideal. 

Emmet  is  the  most  idolised,  the  most  universally  praised  of 
all  Irish  martyrs;  it  is,  therefore,  worthy  of  note  that  in  the 
proclamation  he  drew  up  to  be  issued  in  the  name  of  the  "Pro- 
visional Government  of  Ireland"  the  first  article  decrees  the 
wholesale  confiscation  of  church  property  and  the  nationalising 
of  the  same,  and  the  second  and  third  decrees  forbid  and  declare 
void  the  transfer  of  all  landed  property,  bonds,  debentures,  and 
public  securities  until  the  national  government  is  established  and 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  73 

the  national  will  upon  them  is  declared. 

Two  things  are  thus  established — viz.,  that  Emmet  believed 
the  "national  will"  was  superior  to  property  rights  and  could 
abolish  them  at  will ;  and  also  that  he  realised  that  the  producing 
classes  could  not  be  expected  to  rally  to  the  revolution  unless 
given  to  understand  that  it  meant  their  freedom  from  social  as 
well  as  from  political  bondage. 


CHAPTER  X. 
THE  FIRST  IRISH  SOCIALIST;  A  FORERUNNER  OF  MARX 

"It  is  a  system  which  in  its  least  repulsive  aspects  compels  thousands 
and  tens  of  thousands  to  fret  and  toil,  to  live  and  die  in  hunger  and  rags 
and  wretchedness  in  order  that  a  few  idle  drones  may  revel  in  ease  and 
luxury."— Irish  People,  July  9,  1864. 

FOR  Ireland,  as  for  every  other  part  of  Europe,  the  first  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  period  of  political  darkness,  or 
unbridled  despotism  and  reaction.  The  fear  engendered  in  the 
heart  of  the  ruling  classes  by  the  French  Revolution  had  given 
birth  to  an  almost  insane  hatred  of  reform,  coupled  with  a  wolfish 
ferocity  in  hunting  down  even  the  mildest  reformers.  The 
triumph  of  the  allied  sovereigns  over  Napoleon  was  followed  by 
a  perfect  saturnalia  of  despotism  all  over  Europe,  and  every 
form  of  popular  organisation  v,  as  ruthlessly  suppressed  or  driven 
under  the  surface.  But  driving  organisations  under  the  surface 
does  not  remove  the  cause?  of  discontent,  and,  consequently,  we 
find  that  as  rapidly  as  reaction  triumphed  above  ground  its 
antagonists  spread  their  secret  conspiracies  underneath.  The  pop- 
ular discontent  was  further  increased  by  the  fact  that  the  return 
home  of  the  soldiers  disbanded  from  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  a 
serious  economic  effect.  It  deprived  the  agriculturists  of  a  market 
for  their  produce,  and  produced  a  great  agricultural  and  indus-* 
trial  crisis.  It  threw  out  of  employment  all  the  ships  employed 
in  provisioning  the  troops,  all  the  trades  required  to  build,  equip 
and  repair  them,  all  the  industries  engaged  in  making  war  ma- 
terial, and  in  addition  to  suspending  the  work  and  flooding  the 
labour  market  with  the  men  and  women  thus  disemployed,  it 
cast  adrift  scores  of  thousands  of  able-bodied  soldiers  and  sailors 
to  compete  with  the  civilian  workers  who  had  fed,  clothed  and 
maintained  them  during  the  war.  In  Ireland,  especially,  the 
results  were  disastrous  owing  to  the  inordinately  large  propor- 
tion of  Irish  amongst  the  disbanded  soldiers  and  sailors.  Those 
returning  home  found  the  labour  market  glutted  with  unemployed 

74 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  75 

in  the  cities,  and  in  the  rural  districts  the  landlords  engaged  in 
a  fierce  war  of  extermination  with  their  tenantry,  who,  having 
lost  their  war  market  and  war  prices,  were  unable  to  meet  the 
increasing  exactions  of  the  owners  of  the  soil.  It  was  at  this 
period  the  great  Ribbon  conspiracy  took  hold  upon  the  Irish 
labourer  in  the  rural  districts,  and  although  the  full  truth  relative 
to  that  movement  has  never  yet  been  unearthed  sufficient  is  known 
to  indicate  that  it  was  in  effect  a  secret  agricultural  trades  union 
of  labourers  and  cottier  farmers — a  trades  union  which  under- 
took in  its  own  wild  way  to  execute  justice  upon  the  e victor,  and 
vengeance  upon  the  traitor  to  his  fellows.  Also  at  this  time  Irish 
trade  unionism,  although  secret  and  illegal,  attained  to  its  maxi- 
mum of  strength  and  compact  organisation.  In  1824  the  chief 
constable  of  Dublin,  testifying  before  a  committee  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  declared  that  the  trades  of  Dublin  were  perfectly 
organised,  and  many  of  the  employers  were  already  beginning 
to  complain  of  the  "tyranny  of  the  Irish  trades  unions."  Under 
such  circumstances  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  attention 
which  in  the  eighteenth  century  had  been  given  to  political  re- 
forms and  the  philosophy  thereof  gave  way  in  the  nineteenth  to 
solicitude  for  social  amelioration. 

In  England,  France,  and  Germany  a  crop  of  social  philos- 
ophers sprang  up,  each  with  his  scheme  of  a  perfect  social  order, 
each  with  a  plan  by  which  the  regeneration  of  society  could  be 
accomplished  and  poverty  and  all  its  attendant  evils  abolished. 
For  the  most  part  these  theorists  had  no  complaint  to  make 
against  the  beneficiaries  of  the  social  system  of  the  day;  their 
complaint  was  against  the  results  of  the  social  system.  Indeed 
they  in  most  cases  believed  that  the  governing  and  possessing 
classes  would  themselves  voluntarily  renounce  their  privileges  and 
property  and  initiate  the  new  order  once  they  were  convinced  of 
its  advantages.  With  this  belief  it  was  natural  that  the  chief 
direction  taken  by  their  criticism  of  society  should  be  towards  an 
analysis  of  the  effects  of  competition  upon  buyer  and  seller,  and 
that  the  relation  of  the  labourer  as  producer  to  the  proprietor  as 
appropriator  of  the  thing  produced  should  occupy  no  part  of  their 
examination.  One  result  of  this  one-sided  view  of  social  rela- 
tions necessarily  was  a  complete  ignoring  of  historical  develop- 
ment as  a  factor  in  hastening  the  attainment  of  their  ideal ;  since 
the  new  order  was  to  be  introduced  by  the  governing  class  it  fol- 
lowed that  the  stronger  that  class  became  the  easier  would  be  the 
transition,  and,  consequently,  everything  which  would  tend  to 
weaken  the  social  bond  by  accentuating  class  distinction,  or  im- 


76 

pairing  the  feelings  of  reverence  held  by  the  labourer  for  his 
masters  would  be  a  hindrance  to  progress. 

Those  philosophers  formed  socialist  sects,  and  it  is  known 
that  their  followers,  when  they  lost  the  inspiring  genius  of  their 
leaders,  degenerated  into  reactionaries  of  the  most  pronounced 
type,  opposed  to  every  forward  move  of  labour. 

The  Irish  are  not  philosophers  as  a  rule,  they  proceed  too 
rapidly  from  thought  to  action. 

Hence  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  same  period  which 
produced  the  Utopian  Socialists  before  alluded  to  in  France, 
England,  and  Germany  produced  in  Ireland  an  economist  more 
thoroughly  Socialist  in  the  modern  sense  than  any  of  his  con- 
temporaries— William  Thompson,  of  Clonkeen,  Roscarberry, 
County  Cork — a  Socialist  who  did  not  hesitate  to  direct  attention 
to  the  political  and  social  subjection  of  labour  as  the  worst  evil 
of  society,  nor  to  depict  with  a  merciless  fidelity  to  truth  the 
disastrous  consequences  to  political  freedom  of  the  presence  in 
society  of  a  wealthy  class.  Thompson  was  a  believer  in  the 
possibility  of  realising  Socialism  by  forming  co-operative  colonies 
on  the  lines  of  those  advocated  by  Robert  Owen,  and  to  that 
extent  may  be  classed  as  a  Utopian.  On  the  other  hand  he  be- 
lieved that  such  colonies  must  be  built  by  the  labourers  them- 
selves, and  not  by  the  governing  class.  He  taught  that  the  wealth 
of  the  ruling  class  was  derived  from  the  plunder  of  labour,  and 
he  advocated  as  a  necessary  preliminary  to  Socialism  the  con- 
quest of  political  representation  on  the  basis  of  the  adult  suffrage 
of  both  sexes.  He  did  not  believe  in  the  State  as  a  basis  of 
Socialist  society,  but  he  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  using  po- 
litical weapons  to  destroy  all  class  privileges  founded  in  law,  and 
to  clear  the  ground  of  all  obstacles  which  the  governing  class 
might  desire  to  put  in  the  way  of  the  growth  of  Socialist  com- 
munities. 

Lest  it  may  be  thought  that  we  are  exaggerating  the  merits 
of  Thompson's  work  as  an  original  thinker,  a  pioneer  of  Socialist 
thought  superior  to  any  of  the  Utopian  Socialists  of  the  Con- 
tinent, and  long  ante-dating  Karl  Marx  in  his  insistence  upon 
the  subjection  of  labour  as  the  cause  of  all  social  misery,  modern 
crime  and  political  dependence,  as  well  as  in  his  searching  analysis 
of  the  true  definition  of  capital,  we  will  quote  a  passage  from  his 
most  important  work,  published  in  1824:  "An  Inquiry  into  the 
principles  of  the  distribution  of  Wealth  most  conducive  to  Human 
Happiness  as  applied  to  the  newly  proposed  System  of  the  Vol- 
untary Equality  of  Wealth."  Third  edition. 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  77 

"What,  then,  is  the  most  accurate  idea  of  capital  ?  It  is  that 
portion  of  the  product  of  labour  which,  whether  of  a  permanent 
nature  or  not,  is  capable  of  being  made  the  instrument  of  profit. 
Such  seem  to  be  the  real  circumstances  which  mark  out  one  por- 
tion of  the  products  of  labour  as  capital.  On  such  distinctions, 
however,  have  been  founded  the  insecurity  and  oppression  of  the 
productive  labourer — the  real  parent,  under  the  guidance  of 
knowledge,  of  all  wealth — and  the  enormous  usurpation  over  the 
productive  forces  and  their  fellow-creatures  of  those  who,  under 
the  name  of  capitalists,  or  landlords,  acquired  the  possession  of 
those  accumulated  products — the  yearly  or  permanent  supply  of 
the  community.  Hence  the  opposing  claims  of  the  capitalist  and 
the  labourer.  The  capitalist,  getting  into  his  hands,  under  the 
reign  of  insecurity  and  force,  the  consumption  of  many  labourers 
for  the  coming  year,  the  tools  or  machinery  necessary  to  make 
their  labour  productive,  and  the  dwellings  in  which  they  must 
live,  turned  them  to  the  best  account,  and  bought  labour  and 
its  future  products  with  them  as  cheaply  as  possible.  The  greater 
the  profit  of  capital,  or  trfe  more  the'  capitalist  made  the  labourer 
pay  for  the  advance  of  his  food,  the  use  of  the  implements  or 
machinery  and  the  occupation  of  the  dwelling,  the  less  of  course 
remained  to  the  labourer  for  the  acquisition  of  any  object  of 
desire." 

Or  again,  see  how,  whilst  advocating  political  reform  as  a 
means  to  an  end,  he  depicts  its  inefficiency  when  considered  as 
an  end  in  itself: 

"As  long  as  the  accumulated  capital  of  society  remains  in 
one  set  of  hands,  and  the  productive  power  of  creating  wealth 
remains  in  another,  the  accumulated  capital  will,  while  the  nature 
of  man  continues  as  at  present,  be  made  use  of  to  counteract  the 
natural  laws  of  distribution,  and  to  deprive  the  producers  of  the 
use  of  what  their  labour  has  produced.  Were  it  possible  to  con- 
ceive that,  under  simple  representative  institutions,  any  such  of 
the  expedients  of  insecurity  should  be  permitted  to  remain  in 
existence  as  would  uphold  the  division  of  capital  and  labour, 
such  representative  institutions  (though  all  the  plunder  of  political 
power  should  cease)  would  be  of  little  further  benefit  to  the  real 
happiness  of  mankind,  than  as  affording  an  easy  means  for  the 
development  of  knowledge,  and  the  ultimate  abolition  of  all  such 
expedients.  As  long  as  a  class  of  mere  capitalists  exists  society 
must  remain  in  a  diseased  state.  Whatever  plunder  is  saved 
from  the  hand  of  political  power  will  be  levied  in  another  way 
under  the  name  of  profit  by  capitalists  who,  while  capitalists, 


78  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

must  be  always  law  makers." 

Thompson  advocated  free  education  for  all,  and  went  into 
great  detail  to  prove  its  feasibility,  giving  statistics  to  show  that 
the  total  cost  of  such  education  could  be  easily  borne  by  Ireland, 
without  unduly  increasing  the  burden  of  the  producers.  In  this 
he  was  three  generations  ahead  of  his  time — the  reform  he  then 
advocated  being  only  partially  realised  in  our  day.  Living  in  a 
country  in  which  a  small  minority  imposed  a  detested  religion  by 
force  upon  a  conquered  people  with  the  result  that  a  ferocious 
fanaticism  disgraced  both  sides,  he  yet  had  courage  and  fore- 
sight enough  to  plead  for  secular  education,  and  to  the  cry  of 
the  bigots  who  then  as  now  declare  that  religion  would  die  unless 
supported  by  the  State,  he  answered : 

"Not  only  has  experience  proved  that  religion  can  exist 
without  interfering  with  the  natural  laws  of  distribution  by 
violation  of  security,  but  it  has  increased  and  flourished  as  during 
centuries  in  Ireland  and  in  Greece  under  and  in  spite  of  the  forced 
abstraction  of  its  own  resources  from  its  own  communicants,  to 
enrich  a  rival  and  hated  priesthood,  or  to  feed  the  force  that 
enchained  it." 

How  different  was  the  spirit  of  the  Socialism  preached  by 
Thompson  from  the  visionary  sentimentalism  of  the  Utopians  of 
Continental  Europe,  or  of  Owen  in  his  earlier  days  in  England, 
with  their  constant  appeals  to  the  "humanity"  of  the  possessing 
classes,  is  further  illustrated  by  the  following  passage  which, 
although  lengthy,  we  make  no  apology  for  reproducing.  Because 
of  its  biting  analysis  of  the  attitude  of  the  rich  in  the  various 
stages  of  political  society,  and  the  lust  for  power  which  accom- 
panies extreme  wealth,  the  passage  might  have  been  written  by  a 
Socialist  of  the  twentieth  century : 

"The  unoccupied  rich  are  without  any  active  pursuit;  an 
object  in  life  is  wanting  to  them.  The  means  of  gratifying  the 
senses,  the  imagination  even,  of  sating  all  wants  and  caprices  they 
possess.  The  pleasures  of  power  are  still  to  be  attained.  It  is 
one  of  the  strongest  and  most  unavoidable  propensities  of  those 
who  have  been  brought  up  in  indulgence  to  abhor  restraint,  to 
be  uneasy  under  opposition,  and  therefore  to  desire  power  to 
remove  these  evils  of  restraint  and  opposition.  How  shall  they 
acquire  the  power?  First  by  the  direct  influence  of  their  wealth, 
and  the  hopes  and  fears  it  engenders ;  then  when  these  means  are 
exhausted  or  to  make  these  means  more  effectual  they  endeavour 
everywhere  to  seize  on,  to  monopolise  the  powers  of  Government. 

"Where  despotism  does  not  exist  they  endeavour  to  get  en- 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  79 

tircly  into  their  own  hands,  or  in  conjunction  with  the  head  of 
the  State,  or  other  bodies,  they  seize  as  large  a  portion  as  they 
can  of  the  functions  of  legislation.  Where  despotism  does  not 
exist,  or  is  modified,  they  share  amongst  themselves  all  the  subor- 
dinate departments  of  Government;  they  monopolise,  either  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  the  command  of  the  armed  force,  the  offices 
of  judges,  priests  and  all  those  executive  departments  which  give 
the  most  power,  require  the  least  trouble,  and  render  the  largest 
pecuniary  returns.  When  despotism  exists  the  class  of  the  excess- 
ively rich  make  the  best  terms  they  can  with  the  despot,  to 
share  his  power  whether  as  partners,  equals  or  mere  slaves. 

"If  his  situation  is  such  as  to  give  them  a  confidence  in  their 
strength,  they  make  terms  with  the  despot,  and  insist  on  what  they 
call  their  rights ;  if  they  are  weak  they  gladly  crawl  to  the  despot, 
and  appear  to  glory  in  their  slavishness  to  him  for  the  sake  of 
the  delegated  power  of  making  slaves  to  themselves  of  the  rest 
of  the  community.  Such  do  the  historians  of  all  nations  prove 
the  tendencies  of  excessive  wealth  to  be." 

In  the  English-speaking  world  the  work  of  this  Irish  thinker 
is  practically  unknown,  but  on  the  Continent  of  Europe  his  posi- 
tion has  long  been  established.  Besides  the  work  already  quoted 
he  wrote  an  "Apeal  of  one-half  of  the  Human  Race — Women — 
against  the  Pretensions  of  the  other  half — Men — to  retain  them 
in  Political  and  thence  in  Civil  and  Domestic  Slavery,"  published 
in  London  in  1825.  "Labour  Rewarded,  the  Claims  of  Labour 
and  Capital  Conciliated ;  or,  How  to  Secure  to  Labour  the  Whole 
Product  of  its  Exertions,"  published  in  1827,  and  "Practical  Di- 
rections for  the  Speedy  and  Economical  Establishment  of  Com- 
munities," published  in  London  in  1830,  are  two  other  known 
works.  He  also  left  behind  the  manuscript  of  other  books  on  the 
same  'subject,  but  they  have  never  been  published,  and  their 
whereabouts  is  now  unknown.  It  is  told  of  him  that  he  was  for 
twenty  years  a  vegetarian  and  total  abstainer,  and  in  his  will  left 
the  bulk  of  his  fortune  to  endow  the  first  co-operative  community 
to  be  established  in  Ireland,  and  his  body  for  the  purpose  of 
dissection  in  the  interests  of  science.  His  relations  successfully 
contested  the  will  on  the  ground  that  "immoral  objects  were  in- 
cluded in  its  benefit." 

His  position  in  the  development  of  Socialism  as  a  science  lies, 
in  our  opinion,  midway  between  the  Utopianism  of  the  early 
idealists  and  the  historical  materialism  of  Marx.  He  anticipated 
the  latter  in  most  of  his  analyses  of  the  economic  system,  and 
foresaw  die  part  that  a  democratisation  of  politics  must  play 


80  LABOUR  IN  IRISH   HISTORY 

in  clearing  the  ground  of  the  legal  privileges  of  the  professional 
classes.  In  a  preface  to  the  English  translation  of  the  work  of 
one  of  his  German  biographers,  Anton  Menger,  the  writer,  H.  S. 
Foxwell,  M.A.,  says  of  his  contribution  to  economic  science: 

"Thompson's  fame  will  rest  not  upon  his  advocacy  of  Owen- 
ite  co-operation,  devoted  and  public  spirited  as  that  was,  but  upon 
the  fact  that  he  was  the  first  writer  to  elevate  the  question  of  the 
just  distribution  of  zvealth  to  the  supreme  position  it  has  since 
held  in  English  political  economy.  Up  to  his  time  political 
economy  had  been  rather  commercial  than  industrial,  indeed  he 
finds  it  necessary  to  explain  the  very  meaning  of  the  term  "indus- 
trial," which,  he  says,  was  from  the  French,  no  doubt  adopted 
from  Saint  Simon." 

If  we  were  to  attempt  to  estimate  the  relative  achievements 
of  Thompson  and  Marx  we  should  not  hope  to  do  justice  to  either 
by  putting  them  in  contrast,  or  by  eulogising  Thompson  in  order 
to  belittle  Marx,  as  some  Continental  critics  of  the  latter  seek  to 
do.  Rather  we  should  say  that  the  relative  position  of  this  Irish 
genius  and  of  Marx  are  best  comparable  to  the  historical  relations 
of  the  pre-Darwinian  evolutionists  to  Darwin;  as  Darwin  sys- 
tematised  all  the  theories  of  his  predecessors  and  gave  a  liftime 
to  the  accumulation  of  the  facts  required  to  establish  his  and 
their  position,  so  Marx  found  the  true  line  of  economic  thought 
already  indicated  and  brought  his  genius  and  encyclopaedic  knowl- 
edge and  research  to  place  it  upon  an  unshakable  foundation. 
Thompson  brushed  aside  the  economic  fiction  maintained  by 
the  orthodox  economists  and  accepted  by  the  Utopian  that  profit 
was  made  in  exchange,  and  declared  that  it  was  due  to  the  sub- 
jection of  labour  and  the  resultant  appropriation  by  the  capitalists 
and  landlords  of  the  fruits  of  the  labour  of  others.  He  does  not 
hesitate  to  include  himself  as  a  beneficiary  of  monopoly.  He 
declared,  in  1827,  that  for  about  twelve  years  he  had  been  "living 
on  what  is  called  rent,  the  produce  of  the  labour  of  others."  All 
the  theory  of  the  class  war  is  but  a  deduction  from  this  principle. 
But  although  Thompson  recognised  this  class  war  as  a  fact,  he  did 
not  recognise  it  as  a  factor,  as  the  factor  in  the  evolution  of  so- 
ciety towards  freedom.  This  was  reserved  for  Marx,  and  in 
our  opinion  is  his  chief  and  crowning  glory.  While  Owen  and 
the  Continental  Socialists  were  beseeching  the  favour  of  kings, 
Parliaments  and  Congresses  this  Irishman  was  arraigning  the 
rich,  pointing  out  that  lust  of  power  for  ever  followed  riches, 
that  "capitalists,  while  capitalists,  would  always  be  law  makers," 
but  that  "as  long  as  a  class  of  mere  capitalists  exists  society  must 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  81 

remain  in  a  diseased  state."  The  fact  that  the  daring  Celt  who 
preached  this  doctrine,  arraigning  alike  the  social  and  political 
rulers  of  society  and  society  itself,  also  vehemently  demanded  the 
extension  of  the  suffrage  to  the  whole  adult  population  is  surely 
explanation  enough  why  his  writings  found  no  favour  with  the 
respectable  classes  of  society,  with  those  same  classes  who  so 
frequently  lionised  the  leaders  of  the  Socialist  sects  of  his  day. 

In  our  day  another  great  Irishman,  Standish  O'Grady,  per- 
haps the  greatest  litterateur  in  Ireland,  has  been  preaching  in  the 
pages  of  "The  Peasant,"  Dublin,  1908-9,  against  capitalist  so- 
ciety, and  urging  the  formation  of  co-operative  communities  in 
Ireland  as  an  escape  therefrom,  and  it  is  curiously  significant  of 
how  little  Irishmen  know  of  the  intellectual  achievements  of  their 
race  that  O'Grady  apparently  is  entirely  unconscious  of  the  work 
of  his  great  forerunner  in  that  field  of  endeavour.  It  is  also 
curiously  significant  of  the  conquest  of  the  Irish  mind  by  English 
traditions  that  Irish  Nationalists  should  often  be  found  fighting 
fiercely  against  Socialism  as  "a  German  idea,"  although  every 
social  conception  which  we  find  in  the  flower  in  Marx  we  can  also 
find  in  the  bud  in  Thompson,  twenty-three  years  before  the  pub- 
lication of  the  "Communist  Manifesto,"  forty-three  years  before 
the  issue  of  "Das  Kapital." 

We  will  conclude  this  chapter  by  another  citation  from  this 
Irish  pioneer  of  revolutionary  Socialism ;  we  say  of  revolutionary 
Socialism  advisedly,  for  all  the  deductions  from  his  teachings 
lead  irresistibly  to  the  revolutionary  action  of  the  working  class. 
As  according  to  the  Socialist  philosophy  the  political  demands  of 
the  working  class  movement  must  at  all  times  depend  upon  the 
degree  of  development  of  the  age  and  country  in  which  it  finds 
itself,  it  is  apparent  that  Thompson's  theories  of  action  were  the 
highest  possible  expression  of  the  revolutionary  thought  of  his 
age. 

"The  productive  labourers  stript  of  all  capital,  of  tools, 
houses,  and  materials  to  make  their  labour  productive,  toil  from 
want,  from  the  necessity  of  existence,  their  remuneration  being 
kept  at  the  lowest  compatible  figure  with  the  existence  of  indus-. 
trious  habits 

"How  shall  the  wretchedly  poor  be  virtuous?  Who  cares 
about  them?  What  character  have  they  to  lose?  What  hold  has 
public  opinion  on  their  action?  What  care  they  for  the  delicate 
pleasures  of  reputation  who  are  tormented  by  the  gnawings  of 
absolute  want  ?  How  should  they  respect  the  property  or  rights 
of  others  who  have  none  of  their  own  to  beget  a  sympathy  for 


«2  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

thoae  who  suffer  for  their  privation?  How  can  they  feel  for 
•Chers*  woes,  for  others'  passing  light  complaints,  who  are  tor- 
mented by  their  own  substantial  miseries?  The  mere  mention  of 
Ifce  trivial  inconveniences  of  others  insults  and  excites  the  indig- 
nation instead  of  calling  forth  their  complacent  sympathies.  Cut 
off  from  the  decencies,  the  comforts,  the  necessaries  of  life,  want 
begets  ferocity.  If  they  turn  round  they  find  many  in  the  same 
situation  with  themselves,  partaking  of  their  feelings  of  isolation 
from  kindly  sympathies  with  the  happy.  They  become  a  public  to 
each  other,  a  public  of  suffering,  of  discontent  and  ignorance; 
they  form  a  public  opinion  of  their  own  in  contempt  of  the  public 
opinion  of  the  rich,  whom,  and  their  laws,  they  look  upon  as 
the  result  of  force  alone.  From  whom  are  the  wretched  to  learn 
die  principle  while  they  never  see  the  practice  of  morality?  Of 
respect  for  the  security  of  others  ?  From  their  superiors  ?  From 
the  laws?  The  conduct  of  their  superiors,  the  operation  of  those 
laws  have  been  one  practical  lesson  to  them  of  force,  of  restraint, 
of  taking  away  without  their  consent,  without  any  equivalent  the 
fruiti  of  their  labour.  Of  what  avail  are  morals  or  principles  or 
cotOmands,  when  opposed,  when  belied,  by  example?  These  can 
never  supply  motives  of  virtuous  conduct.  Motives  arise  from 
things,  from  surrounding  circumstances,  not  from  the  idleness 
of  words  and  empty  declamations.  Words  are  only  useful  to  con- 
vey and  impress  a  knowledge  of  these  things  and  circumstances. 
If  tftese  things  do  not  exist  words  are  mere  mockery" 

With  this  bit  of  economic  determinist  philosophy — teaching 
that  morality  is  a  thing  of  social  growth,  the  outcome  of  things 
and  circumstances — we  leave  this  earliest  Irish  apostle  of  the 
social  revolution.  Fervent  Celtic  enthusiasts  are  fond  of  claim- 
ing, and  the  researches  of  our  days  seem  to  bear  out  the  claim, 
tfcat  Irish  missionaries  were  the  first  to  rekindle  the  lamp  of 
learning  in  Europe,  and  dispel  the  intellectual  darkness  following 
the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire ;  may  we  not  also  take  pride 
M  the  fact  that  an  Irishman  also  was  the  first  to  pierce  the  worse 
than  Egyptian  darkness  of  capitalist  barbarism  and  point  out  to 
the  toilers  the  conditions  of  their  enslavement,  and  the  essential 
pre-requisites  of  their  emancipation? 


CHAPTER  XI. 
AN  IRISH  UTOPIA 

"Were  the  hand  of  Locke  to  hold  from  heaven  a  scheme  of  govern- 
ment most  perfectly  adapted  to  the  nature  and  capabilities  of  the  Irish 
nation,  it  would  drop  to  the  ground  a  mere  sounding  scroll  were  there  no 
other  means  of  giving  it  effect  than  its  intrinsic  excellence.  All  true 
Irishmen  agree  in  what  ought  to  be  done,  but  how  to  get  it  done  is  the 
question."— Secret  Manifesto  (Ireland),  1793. 

IN  our  last  chapter  we  pointed  out  how  the  close  of  the  Na- 
poleonic wars  precipitated  a  commercial  crisis  in  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  and  how  in  the  latter  country  it  also  served  to  in- 
tensify the  bitterness  of  the  relations  existing  between  landlord 
and  tenant.  During  the  continuance  of  the  wars  against  Na- 
poleon agricultural  prices  had  steadily  risen  owing  to  the  demand 
by  the  British  Government  for  provisions  to  supply  its  huge  army 
and  navy.  With  the  rise  in  prices  rents  had  also  risen,  but  when 
the  close  of  the  war  cut  off  the  demand,  and  prices  consequently 
fell,  rents  did  not  fall  along  with  them.  A  falling  market  and 
a  stationary  or  rising  rent-roll  could  have  but  one  result  in  Ire- 
land— viz.,  agrarian  war. 

The  landlords  insisted  upon  their  "pound  of  flesh",  and  the 
peasantry  organised  in  secret  to  terrorise  their  oppressors  and 
protect  themselves.  In  the  year  1829  a  fresh  cause  of  popular 
misery  came  as  a  result  of  the  Act  granting  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion. Until  that  year  no  Catholic  had  the  right  to  sit  in  the 
English  House  of  Commons,  to  sit  on  the  Bench  as  a  Judge,  or 
to  aspire  to  any  of  the  higher  posts  in  the  Civil,  Military,  or 
Naval  services.  As  the  culmination  of  a  long  fight  against  this 
iniquitous  "Protestant  Ascendancy,"  after  he  had  aroused  the 
entire  Catholic  population  to  a  pitch  of  frenzy  against  the  in- 
justices inherent  in  it,  the  Catholic  leader,  Daniel  O'Connell,  pre- 
sented himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  representation  in  Parliament 
of  the  County  Gare,  declaring  that  if  elected  he  would  refuse 

83 


84  LABOUR   IN   IRISH    HISTORY 

to  take  the  oath  then  required  of  a  Member  of  Parliament,  as 
it  libelled  the  Catholic  Religion.  In  Ireland  at  that  time  open 
voting  prevailed,  every  elector  having  to  openly  declare  before  the 
clerks  of  the  election  and  all  others  who  chose  to  attend,  the 
name  of  the  candidate  for  whom  he  voted.  In  Ireland  at  that 
time  also  most  of  the  tenants  were  tenants-at-will,  removable  at 
the  mere  pleasure  of  the  agent  or  landlord.  Hence  elections  were 
a  combination  of  farce  and  tragedy — a  farce  as  far  as  a  means 
of  ascertaining  the  real  wish  of  the  electors  were  concerned,  a 
tragedy  whenever  any  of  the  tenants  dared  to  vote  against  the 
nominee  of  the  landlord.  The  suffrage  had  been  extended  to  all 
tenants  paying  an  annual  rental  of  forty  shillings,  irrespective  of 
religious  belief,  but  the  terrible  power  of  life  and  death  pos- 
sessed by  the  landlord  made  this  suffrage  ordinarily  useless  for 
popular  purposes.  Yet  when  O'Connell  appealed  to  the  Catholic 
peasantry  of  Clare  to  brave  the  vengeance  of  their  landed  tyrants 
and  vote  for  him  in  the  interests  of  religious  liberty  they  nobly 
responded.  O'Connell  was  elected,  and  as  a  result  Catholic 
Emancipation  was  soon  afterwards  achieved.  But  the  ruling 
classes  and  the  British  Government  took  their  revenge  by  coupling 
with  this  reform  a  Bill  depriving  the  smaller  tenants  of  the 
suffrage,  and  raising  the  amount  of  rent  necessary  to  qualify  for 
a  vote  to  ten  pounds. 

Up  till  that  time  landlords  had  rather  encouraged  the  growth 
of  population  on  their  estates,  as  it  increased  the  number  of 
their  political  adherents,  but  with  the  passage  of  this  Act  of 
Parliament  this  reason  ceased  to  exist  and  they  immediately  began 
the  wholesale  eviction  of  their  tenantry  and  the  conversion  of 
the  arable  lands  into  grazing  farms.  The  Catholic  middle,  pro- 
fessional and  landed  class  by  Catholic  Emancipation  had  the  way 
•pened  to  them  for  all  the  snug  berths  in  the  disposal  of  the 
Government;  the  Catholics  of  the  poorer  class  as  a  result  of  the 
same  Act  were  doomed  to  extermination  to  satisfy  the  vengeance 
of  a  foreign  Government,  and  an  aristocracy  whose  power  had 
been  defied  where  it  knew  itself  most  supreme. 

The  wholesale  eviction  of  the  smaller  tenants  and  the  ab- 
sorption of  their  farms  into  huge  grazing  ranches,  thus  closing 
up  every  avenue  of  employment  to  labour,  meant  death  to  the 
agricultural  population,  and  hence  the  peasantry  struck  back  by 
every  means  in  their  power.  They  formed  lodges  of  the  Secret 
Ribbon  Society,  made  midnight  raids  for  arms  upon  the  houses 
of  the  gentry,  assembled  at  night  in  large  bodies  and  ploughed 
up  the  grass  lands,  making  them  useless  for  grazing  purposes, 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  85 

filled  up  ditches,  terrorised  graziers  into  surrendering  their 
ranches,  wounded  and  killed  those  who  had  entered  the  service 
of  graziers  or  obnoxious  landlords,  assassinated  agents,  and  some- 
times in  sheer  despair  opposed  their  unarmed  bodies  to  the  arms 
of  military.  Civil  war  of  the  most  sanguinary  character  was  con- 
vulsing the  country;  in  May,  1831,  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ire- 
land and  a  huge  military  force  accompanied  by  artillery  marched 
through  Clare  to  overawe  the  people,  but  as  he  did  not  stop  evic- 
tions, nor  provide  employment  for  the  labourers  whom  the  estab- 
lishment of  grazing  had  deprived  of  their  usual  employment  on 
the  farm,  the  "outrages"  still  continued.  Nor  were  the  profes- 
sional patriots,  or  the  newly  emancipated  Catholic  rich,  any  more 
sympathetic  to  the  unfortunate  people.  They  had  opened  the 
way  for  themselves  to  place  and  preferment  by  using  the  labourer 
and  cotter-farmer  as  a  lever  to  overthrow  the  fortress  of  religious 
bigotry  and  ascendancy,  and  now  when  the  fight  was  won  they 
abandoned  these  poor  co-religionists  of  theirs  to  the  tender  mer- 
cies of  their  economic  masters.  To  the  cry  of  despair  welKng 
up  from  the  hearts  of  the  evicted  families,  crouching  in  hunger 
upon  the  road-side  in  sight  of  their  ruined  homes,  to  the  heart- 
broken appeal  of  the  labourer  permanently  disemployed  by  the 
destruction  of  his  source  of  employment ;  to  the  wail  of  famishing 
women  and  children  the  politicians  invariably  had  but  one  an- 
swer— "Be  law  abiding,  and  wait  for  the  Repeal  of  the  Union." 
We  are  not  exaggerating.  One  of  the  most  ardent  Repealers  and 
closest  friends  of  Daniel  O'Connell,  Mr.  Thomas  Steele,  had  the 
following  manifesto  posted  up  in  the  Market  Place  of  Ennis  and 
other  parts  of  Clare,  addressed  to  the  desperate  labourers  and 
farmers : 

"Unless  you  desist,  I  denounce  you  as  traitors  to  the  cause 
of  the  liberty  of  Ireland.  ...  I  leave  you  to  the  Government 
and  the  fire  and  bayonets  of  the  military.  Your  blood  be  upor4 
your  own  souls." 

This  language  of  denunciation  was  uttered  to  the  heroic 
men  and  women  who  had  sacrificed  their  homes,  their  security, 
and  the  hopes  of  food  for  their  children  to  win  the  emancipation 
from  religious  tyranny  of  the  well-fed  snobs  who  thus  aban- 
doned them.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  promised  Repeal  of  the 
Union  some  time  in  the  future  could  have  been  of  any  use  to 
the  starving  men  of  Clare,  especially  when  they  knew  that  their 
fathers  had  been  starved,  evicted  and  tyrannised  over  before  just 
as  they  were  after  the  Unic-n.  At  that  time,  however,  it  was 
deemed  a  highly  patriotic  act  to  ascribe  all  the  ills  that  Irish 


86 

flesh  is  heir  to  to  the  Union.  For  example,  a  Mr.  O'Gorman 
Mahon,  speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons,  London,  on  Feb- 
ruary 8,  1831,  hinted  that  the  snow  storm  then  covering  Ireland 
was  a  result  of  the  Legislative  Union.  He  said: 

"Did  the  Hon.  Members  imagine  that  they  could  prevent 
the  unfortunate  men  who  were  under  five  feet  of  snow  from 
thinking  they  could  better  their  condition  by  a  Repeal  of  the 
Union  ?  It  might  be  said  that  England  had  not  caused  the  snow, 
but  the  people  had  the  snow  on  them,  and  they  thought  that  their 
connection  with  England  had  reduced  them  to  the  state  in  which 
they  now  were." 

Another  patriot  destined  in  after  years  to  don  the  mantle  of 
an  Irish  rebel,  William  Smith  O'Brien,  at  this  time,  1830,  pub- 
lished a  pamphlet  advocating  emigration  as  the  one  remedy  for 
Irish  misery. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  Commission  appointed  by  the  House 
of  Lords  in  1839  to  inquire  into  the  causes  of  the  unrest  and 
secret  conspiracies  amongst  the  poorer  class  examined  many  wit- 
nesses in  close  touch  with  the  life  of  the  peasantry  and  elicted 
much  interesting  testimony  tending  to  prove  that  the  evil  was 
much  more  deeply  rooted  than  any  political  scheme  of  Govern- 
ment, and  that  its  real  roots  were  in  the  social  conditions.  Thus 
examined  as  to  the  attitude  of  the  labourers  towards  the  Ribbon 
Association,  one  witness  declared: 

"Many  look  to  the  Association  for  protection.  They  think 
they  have  no  other  protection." 

Question: — "What  are  the  principal  objects  they  have  in 
view  ?" 

Answer: — "To  keep  themselves  upon  their  lands.  I  have 
often  heard  their  conversation,  when  they  say: — 

"What  good  did  Emancipation  do  for  us?  Are  we  better 
clothed  or  fed,  or  are  our  children  better  clothed  or  fed?  Are 
we  not  as  naked  as  we  were,  and  eating  dry  potatoes  when  we 
can  get  them?  Let  us  notice  the  farmers  to  give  us  better  food 
and  better  wages,  and  not  give  so  much  to  the  landlord,  and  more 
to  the  workman;  we  must  not  be  letting  them  be  turning  the 
poor  people  off  the  ground." 

And  a  Mr.  Poulett  Scroope,  M.P.,  declared  in  one  of  his 
writings  upon  the  necessity  for  a  Poor  Law:  "The  tithe  ques- 
tion, the  Church,  the  Grand  Jury  laws,  the  more  or  fewer  Cath- 
olics appointed  to  the  Sheriffalty  or  Magistracy — these  are  all 
topics  for  political  agitation  among  idle  mobs;  but  the  midnight 
massacre,  the  daily  plunder,  the  frequent  insurrection,  the  inse- 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  87 

curity  of  life  and  property  throughout  agricultural  districts  of 
Ireland,  these  are  neither  caused  by  agitation,  nor  can  be  put 
down  with  agitation." 

It  will  be  thus  seen  that  the  opinion  of  tht  independent 
Member  of  Parliament  coincided  with  that  of  the  revolting  la- 
bourers as  to  the  relative  unimportance  to  the  toilers  of  Ireland 
of  the  subjects  which  then  as  now  bulked  most  largely  in  the 
minds  of  politicians. 

This  was  the  state  of  things  political  and  social  in  Ireland 
in  the  year  1831  and  as  it  was  in  Clare  the  final  effective  blow 
had  been  struck  for  religious  emancipation  so  it  also  was  Clare 
that  was  destined  to  see  the  first  effort  to  discover  a  peaceful 
way  of  achieving  that  social  Emancipation,  without  which  all 
other  freedom,  religious  or  political,  must  ever  remain  as  Dead 
Sea  fruit  to  the  palate  of  Labour. 

In  1823  the  great  English  socialist,  Robert  Owen,  visited 
Ireland  and  held  a  number  of  meetings  in  the  Rotunda,  Dublin, 
for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the  principles  of  Socialism  to  tine 
people  of  that  city.  His  audiences  were  mainly  composed  of  the 
well-to-do  inhabitants,  as  was,  indeed,  the  case  universally  at 
that  period  when  Socialism  was  the  fad  of  the  rich  instead  of 
the  faith  of  the  poor.  The  Duke  of  Leinster,  the  Catholic  Arch- 
bishop Murray,  Lord  Meath,  Lord  Cloncurry,  and  others  occu- 
pied the  platform,  and  as  a  result  of  the  picture  drawn  by  Owen 
of  the  misery  then  existing,  and  the  attendant  insecurity  of  life 
and  property  amongst  all  classes,  and  his  outline  of  the  possi- 
bilities which  a  system  of  Socialist  co-operation  could  produce, 
an  association  styling  itself  the  "Hibernian  Philanthropic  Society" 
was  informed  to  carry  out  his  ideas.  A  sum  of  money  was  sub- 
scribed to  aid  the  prospects  of  the  society,  a  General  Brown, 
giving  £1,000,  Lord  Cloncurry  £500,  Mr.  Owen  himself  subscrib- 
ing £1,000,  and  £100  being  raised  from  other  sources  The  so- 
ciety was  short  lived  and  ineffectual,  but  one  of  the  members,, 
Mr.  Arthur  Vandeleur,  an  Irish  landlord,  was  so  deeply  infr-- 
pressed  with  all  he  had  seen  and  heard  of  the  possibilities  of 
Owenite  Socialism,  that  in  1831,  when  crime  and  outrage  in  the 
country  had  reached  its  zenith,  and  the  insecurity  of  life  in  his 
own  class  had  been  brought  home  to  him  by  the  assassination 
of  the  steward  of  his  estate  for  unfeeling  conduct  towards  the 
labourers,  he  resolved  to  make  an  effort  to  establish  a  Socialist 
colony  upon  his  property  at  Ralahine,  County  Clare.  For  that 
purpose  he  invited  to  Ireland  a  Mr.  Craig,  of  Manchester,  a  fol- 
lower of  Owen,  and  entrusted  him  with  the  task  of  carrying  the, 


88  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

project  into  execution. 

Though  Mr.  Craig  knew  no  Irish,  and  the  people  of  Ralahine, 
as  a  rule,  knew  no  English — a  state  of  matters  which  greatly 
complicated  the  work  of  explanation — an  understanding  was 
finally  arrived  at,  and  the  estate  was  turned  over  to  an  association 
of  the  people  organised  under  the  title  of  "The  Ralahine  Agri- 
cultural and  Manufacturing  Co-Operative  Association." 

In  the  preamble  of  the  Laws  of  the  Association,  its  objects 
were  defined  as  follows: 

"The  acquisition  of  a  common  capital. 

"The  mutual  assurance  of  its  members  against  the  evils  of 
poverty,  sickness,  infirmity,  and  old  age. 

"The  attainment  of  a  greater  share  of  the  comforts  of  life 
than  the  working  classes  now  possess. 

"The  mental  and  moral  improvement  of  its  adult  members. 

"The  education  of  their  children." 

The  following  paragraphs  selected  from  the  Rules  of  the 
Association  will  give  a  pretty  clear  idea  of  its  most  important 
features : — 

"BASIS  OF  THE  SOCIETY. 

"That  all  the  stock,  implements  of  husbandry,  and  other 
property  belong  to  and  are  the  property  of  Mr.  Vandeleur,  until 
the  Society  accumulates  sufficient  to  pay  for  them ;  they  then  be- 
come the  joint  property  of  the  Society. 

"PRODUCTION. 

"We  engage  that  whatever  talents  we  may  individually  pos- 
sess, whether  mental  or  muscular,  agricultural,  manufacturing, 
or  scientific,  shall  be  directed  to  the  benefit  of  all,  as  well  by 
their  immediate  exercise  in  all  necessary  occupations  as  by  com- 
municating our  knowledge  to  each  other,  and  particularly  to 
the  young. 

"That,  as  far  as  we  can  be  reduced  to  practice,  each  indi- 
vidual shall  assist  in  agricultural  operations,  particularly  in  har- 
vest, it  being  fully  understood  that  no  individual  is  to  act  as 
steward,  but  all  are  to  work. 

"That  all  the  youth,  male  or  female,  do  engage  to  leara 
some  useful  trade,  together  with  agriculture  and  gardening,  be- 
tween the  ages  of  nine  and  seventeen  years. 

"That  the  committee  meet  every  evening  to  arrange  the  busi- 
ness for  the  following  day. 

"That  the  hours  of  labour  be  from  six  in  the  morning  til 


89 

six  in  the  evening,  in  summer,  and  from  daybreak  till  dusk  in 
winter,  with  the  intermission  of  one  hour  for  dinner. 

"That  each  agricultural  labouring  man  shall  receive  eight- 
pence,  and  every  woman  fivepence  per  day  for  their  labour 
(these  were  the  ordinary  wages  of  the  country,  the  secretary, 
storekeeper,  smiths,  joiners,  and  a  few  others  received  some- 
thing more;  the  excess  being  borne  by  the  proprietor)  which  it 
is  expected  will  be  paid  out  at  the  store  in  provisions,  or  any 
other  article  the  society  may  produce  or  keep  there;  any  other 
articles  may  be  purchased  elsewhere. 

"That  no  member  be  expected  to  perform  any  service  or 
work  but  such  as  is  agreeable  to  his  or  her  feelings,  or  they 
are  able  to  perform;  but  if  any  member  thinks  that  any  other 
member  is  not  usefully  employing  his  or  her  time,  it  is  his  or 
her  duty  to  report  it  to  the  committee,  whose  duty  it  will  be  to 
bring  that  member's  conduct  before  a  general  meeting,  who  shall 
have  power,  if  necessary,  to  expel  that  useless  member. 

"DISTRIBUTION  AND  DOMESTIC  ECONOMY. 

"That  all  the  services  usually  performed  by  servants  be 
performed  by  the  youth  of  both  sexes  under  the  age  of  seventeen 
years,  either  by  rotation  or  choice. 

"That  the  expenses  of  the  children's  food,  clothing,  wash- 
ing, lodging,  and  education  be  paid  out  of  the  common  funds  of 
the  society,  from  the  time  they  are  weaned  till  they  arrive  at  the 
age  of  seventeen,  when  they  shall  be  eligible  to  become  members. 

"That  a  charge  be  made  for  the  food  and  clothing,  &c.,  of 
those  children  trained  by  their  parents,  and  residing  in  their 
dwellinghouses. 

"That  each  person  occupying  a  house,  or  cooking  and  con- 
suming their  victuals  therein,  must  pay  for  the  fuel  used. 

"That  no  charge  be  made  for  fuel  used  in  the  public  room. 

"That  it  shall  be  a  special  object  for  the  sub-committee  of 
domestic  economy,  or  the  superintendent  of  that  department,  to 
ascertain  and  put  in  practice  the  best  and  most  economical  meth- 
ods of  preparing  and  cooking  the  food. 

"That  all  the  washing  be  done  together  in  the  public  wash- 
house  ;  the  expenses  of  soap,  labour,  fuel,  &c.,  to  be  equally  borne 
by  all  the  adult  members. 

"That  each  member  pay  the  sum  of  one  half-penny  out  of 
every  shilling  received  as  wages  to  form  a  fund  to  be  placed 
in  the  hands  of  the  committee,  who  shall  pay  the  wages  out  of 
this  fund  of  any  member  who  may  fall  sick  or  meet  with  a» 


90  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

accident. 

"Any  damage  done  by  a  member  to  the  stock,  implements, 
or  any  other  property  belonging  to  the  society  to  be  made  good 
out  of  the  wages  of  the  individual,  unless  the  damage  is  satis- 
factorily accounted  for  to  the  committee. 

"EDUCATION  AND  FORMATION  OF  CHARACTER. 

"We  guarantee  each  other  that  the  young  children  of  any 
person  dying,  whilst  a  member  of  this  society,  shall  be  equally 
protected,  educated,  and  cherished  with  the  children  of  the  liv- 
ing members,  and  entitled,  when  they  arrive  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, to  all  the  privileges  of  members. 

"That  each  individual  shall  enjoy  perfect  liberty  of  consci- 
ence, and  freedom  of  expression  of  opinion,  and  in  religious 
worship. 

"That  no  spirituous  liquors  of  any  kind,  tobacco,  or  snuff 
be  kept  in  the  store,  or  on  the  premises. 

"That  if  any  of  us  should  unfortunately  have  a  dispute 
with  any  other  person,  we  agree  to  abide  by  a  decision  of  the 
majority  of  the  members,  or  any  person  to  whom  the  matter  in 
question  may  be  by  them  referred. 

"That  any  person  wishing  to  marry  another  do  sign  a  de- 
claration to  that  effect  one  week  previous  to  the  marriage  taking 
place,  and  that  immediate  preparations  be  made  for  the  erection, 
or  fitting  up  of  a  suitable  dwellinghouse  for  their  reception. 

"That  any  person  wishing  to  marry  another  person,  not  a 
member,  shall  sign  a  declaration  according  to  the  last  rule;  the 
person  not  a  member  shall  then  be  balloted  for,  and,  if  rejected, 
both  must  leave  the  society. 

"That  if  the  conduct  of  any  member  be  found  injurious  to 
the  well-being  of  the  society,  the  committee  shall  explain  to  him 
or  her  in  what  respect  his  or  her  conduct  has  been  injurious, 
and  if  the  said  member  shall  continue  to  transgress  the  rules, 
such  member  shall  be  brought  before  a  general  meeting,  called 
for  the  purpose,  and  if  the  complaint  be  substantiated,  three- 
fourths  of  the  members  present  shall  have  power  to  expel,  by 
ballot,  such  refractory  member. 

"GOVERNMENT. 

"The  society  to  be  governed,  and  its  business  transacted, 
by  a  committee  of  nine  members,  to  be  chosen  half-yearly,  by 
ballot,  by  all  the  adult  male  and  female  members,  the  ballot  list 
to  contain  at  least  four  of  the  last  committee. 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  91 

"The  committee  to  meet  every  evening,  and  their  transac- 
tions to  be  regularly  entered  into  a  minute  book,  the  recapitula- 
tion of  which  is  to  be  given  at  the  society's  general  meeting  by 
the  secretary. 

"That  there  be  a  general  weekly  meeting  of  the  society ;  that 
the  treasurer's  accounts  be  audited  by  the  committee,  and  read 
over  to  the  society;  that  the  'Suggestion  Book'  be  also  read  at 
this  meeting." 

The  colony  did  not  use  the  ordinary  currency  of  the  country, 
but  instead  adopted  a  "Labour  Note"  system  of  payment,  all 
workers  being  paid  in  notes  according  to  the  number  of  hours 
worked,  and  being  able  to  exchange  the  notes  in  the  store  for 
all  the  necessities  of  life.  The  notes  were  printed  on  stiff  card- 
board about  the  size  of  a  visiting  card,  and  represented  the  equiva- 
lent of  a  whole,  a  half,  a  quarter,  an  eighth,  and  a  sixteenth  of 
a  day's  labour.  There  were  also  special  notes  printed  in  red  ink 
representing  respectively  the  labours  of  a  day  and  a  half,  and 
two  days.  In  his  account  of  the  colony  published  under  the  title 
of  "History  of  Ralahine,"  by  Heywood  &  Sons,  Manchester  (a 
book  we  earnestly  recommend  to  all  our  readers),  Mr.  Craig 
says: — "The  labour  was  recorded  daily  on  a  'Labour  Sheet/ 
which  was  exposed  to  view  during  the  following  week.  The 
members  could  work  or  not  at  their  own  discretion.  If  no  work, 
no  record,  and,  therefore,  no  pay.  Practically  the  arrangement 
was  of  great  use.  There  were  no  idlers."  Further  on  he  com- 
ments : 

"The  advantages  of  the  labour  notes  were  soon  evident  in 
the  saving  of  members.  They  had  no  anxiety  as  to  employ- 
ment, wages,  or  the  price  of  provisions.  Each  could  partake  of 
as  much  vegetable  food  as  he  or  she  could  desire.  The  expenses 
of  the  children  from  infancy,  for  food  or  education,  were  pro- 
vided for  out  of  the  common  fund. 

"The  object  should  be  to  obtain  a  rule  of  justice,  if  we 
seek  the  law  of  righteousness.  This  can  only  be  fully  realised 
in  that  equality  arising  out  of  a  community  of  property  where 
the  labour  of  one  member  is  valued  at  the  same  rate  as  that  of 
another  member,  and  labour  is  exchanged  for  labour.  It  was 
not  possible  to  attain  to  this  condition  of  equality  at  Ralahine, 
but  we  made  such  arrangements  as  would  impart  a  feeling  of 
security,  fairness  and  justice  to  all.  The  prices  of  provisions 
were  fixed  and  uniform.  A  labourer  was  charged  one  shilling 
a  week  for  as  many  vegetables  and  as  much  fruit  as  he  chose 
to  consume ;  milk  was  a  penny  per  quart ;  beef  and  mutton  four- 


92  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

pence,  and  pork  two  and  one-half  pence  per  pound.  The  mar- 
ried members  occupying  separate  quarters  were  charged  sixpence 
per  week  for  rent,  and  twopence  for  fuel." 

In  dealing  with  Ireland  no  one  can  afford  to  ignore  the 
question  of  the  attitude  of  the  clergy;  it  is  therefore  interesting 
to  quote  the  words  of  an  English  visitor  to  Ralahine,  a  Mr. 
Finch,  who  afterwards  wrote  a  series  of  fourteen  letters  de- 
scribing the  community,  and  offered  to  lay  a  special  report  be- 
fore a  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  upon  th^ 
subject.  He  says: 

"The  only  religion  taught  by  the  society  was  the  unceasing 
practice  of  promoting  the  happiness  of  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  to  the  utmost  extent  in  their  power.  Hence  the  Bible  was 
not  used  as  a  school-book;  no  sectarian  opinions  were  taught  in 
the  schools ;  no  public  dispute  about  religious  dogmas  or  party 
political  questions  took  place;  nor  were  members  allowed  to 
ridicule  each  other's  religion;  nor  were  there  any  attempts  at 
proselytism.  Perfect  freedom  in  the  performance  of  religions 
duties  and  religious  exercises  was  guaranteed  to  all.  The  teach- 
ing of  religion  was  left  to  ministers  of  religion  and  to  the  par- 
ents ;  but  no  priest  or  minister  received  anything  from  the  funds 
of  the  society.  Nevertheless,  both  Protestant  and  Catholic  priests 
were  friendly  to  the  system  as  soon  as  they  understood  it,  and 
one  reason  was  they  found  these  sober,  industrious  persons  had 
now  a  little  to  give  them  out  of  their  earnings,  whereas  for- 
merly they  had  been  beggars." 

Mr.  Craig  also  states  that  the  members  of  the  community 
after  it  had  been  in  operation  for  some  time,  were  better  Catho- 
lics than  before  they  began.  He  had  at  first  considerable  diffi- 
culty in  warding  off  the  attacks  of  zealous  Protestant  proselytis- 
ers,  and  his  firmness  in  doing  so  was  one  of  the  chief  factors  in 
winning  the  confidence  of  the  people  as  well  as  their  support  in 
insisting  upon  the  absolutely  non-sectarian  character  of  the 
teaching. 

All  disputes  between  the  members  were  settled  by  appeals 
to  a  general  meeting  in  which  all  adults  of  both  sexes  partici- 
pated, and  from  which  all  judges,  lawyers,  and  other  members 
of  the  legal  fraternity  were  rigorously  excluded. 

To  those  who  fear  that  the  institution  of  common  property 
will  be  inimical  to  progress  and  invention,  it  must  be  reassuring 
to  learn  that  this  community  of  "ignorant"  Irish  peasants  intro- 
duced into  Ralahine  the  first  reaping  machine  used  in  Ireland, 
and  hailed  it  as  a  blessing  at  a  time  when  the  gentleman  farmers 


93 

of  England  were  still  gravely  debating  the  practicability  of  the 
invention.  From  an  address  to  the  agricultural  labourers  of  the 
County  Clare,  issued  by  the  community  on  the  occasion  of  the 
introduction  of  this  machine,  we  take  the  following  passages, 
illustrative  of  the  difference  of  effect  between  invention  under 
common  ownership  and  under  capitalist  ownership: — 

"This  machine  of  ours  is  one  of  the  first  machines  ever 
given  to  the  working  classes  to  lighten  their  labour,  and  at  the 
same  time  increase  their  comforts.  It  does  not  benefit  any  one 
person  among  us  exclusively,  nor  throw  any  individual  out  of 
employment.  Any  kind  of  machinery  used  for  shortening  labour 
— except  used  in  a  co-operative  society  like  ours — must  tend  to 
lessen  wages,  and  to  deprive  working  men  of  employment,  and 
finally  either  to  starve  them,  force  them  into  some  other  employ- 
ment (and  then  reduce  wages  in  that  also)  or  compel  them  to 
emigrate.  Now,  if  the  working  classes  would  cordially  and 
peacefully  unite  to  adopt  our  system,  no  power  or  party  could 
prevent  their  success." 

This  was  published  by  order  of  the  committee,  21st  August, 
1833,  and  when  we  observe  the  date  we  cannot  but  wonder  at  the 
number  of  things  Clare — and  the  rest  of  Ireland — has  forgotten 
since. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  landlord  of  the  estate  on 
which  Ralahine  was  situated  had  allowed  his  enthusiasm  for 
Socialism  to  run  away  with  his  self-interest.  On  the  contrary, 
when  turning  over  his  farms  to  the  community  he  stipulated  for 
the  payment  to  himself  of  a  very  heavy  rental  in  kind.  We  ex- 
tract from  "Brotherhood,"  a  Christian  Socialist  Journal  pub- 
lished in  the  north  of  Ireland  in  1891,  a  statement  of  the  rental, 
and  a  very  luminous  summing  up  of  the  lesson  of  Ralahine,  by 
the  editor,  Mr.  Bruce  Wallace,  long  a  hard  and  unselfish  worker 
for  the  cause  of  Socialism  in  Ireland : — 

"The  Association  was  bound  to  deliver  annually,  either  at 
Ralahine,  Bunratty,  Clare,  or  Limerick,  as  the  landlord  might 
require,  free  of  expense — 

Wheat 320  brls. 

Barley   240  brls. 

Oats 50  brls. 

Butter 10  cwt. 

Pork    30  cwt. 

Beef 70  cwt. 

"At  the  prices  then  prevailing,  this  amount  of  produce  would 
be  equivalent  to  about  £900,  £700  of  rent  for  the  use  of  natural 


94  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

forces  and  opportunities,  and  £200  of  interest  upon  capital.  It 
was  thus  a  pretty  stiff  tribute  that  these  poor  Irish  toilers  had 
to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  making  a  little  bit  of  their  native  soil 
fruitful.  This  tribute  was,  of  course,  so  much  to  be  deducted 
from  the  means  of  improving  their  sunken  condition.  In  any 
future  efforts  that  may  be  made  to  profit  by  the  example  of 
Ralahine  and  to  apply  again  the  principles  of  co-operation  in 
farming,  there  ought  to  be  the  utmost  care  taken  to  reduce  to 
a  minimum  the  tribute  payable  to  non-workers,  and  if  possible 
to  get  rid  of  it  altogether.  If,  despite  this  heavy  burden  of 
having  to  produce  a  luxurious  maintenance  for  loungers,  the 
condition  of  the  toilers  at  Ralahine,  as  we  shall  see,  was  mar- 
vellously raised  by  the  introduction  of  the  co-operative  principle 
amongst  them,  how  much  more  satisfactorily  would  it  have  been 
raised  had  they  been  free  of  that  depressing  dead  weight?" 

Such  is  the  lesson  of  Ralahine.  Had  all  the  land  and  build- 
ings belonged  to  the  people,  had  all  other  estates  in  Ireland  been 
conducted  on  the  same  principles  and  the  industries  of  the 
country  also  so  organised,  had  each  of  them  appointed  delegates 
to  confer  on  the  business  of  the  country  at  some  common  centre 
as  Dublin,  the  framework  and  basis  of  a  free  Ireland  would 
have  been  realised.  And  when  Ireland  does  emerge  into  com- 
plete control  of  her  own  destinies  she  must  seek  the  happiness 
of  her  people  in  the  extension  on  a  national  basis  of  the  social 
arrangements  of  Ralahine,  or  else  be  but  another  social  pur- 
gatory for  her  poor — a  purgatory  where  the  pangs  of  the  suf- 
ferers will  be  heightened  by  remembering  the  delusive  promises 
of  political  reformers. 

In  the  most  crime-ridden  county  in  Ireland  this  partial  ex- 
periment in  Socialism  abolished  crime;  where  the  fiercest  fight 
for  religious  domination  had  been  fought  it  brought  the  mildest 
tolerance;  where  drunkenness  had  fed  fuel  to  the  darkest  pas- 
sions it  established  sobriety  and  gentleness ;  where  poverty  and 
destitution  had  engendered  brutality,  midnight  marauding,  and 
a  contempt  for  all  social  bonds,  it  enthroned  security,  peace  and 
rererence  for  justice,  and  it  did  this  solely  by  virtue  of  the  influ- 
ence of  the  new  social  conception  attendant  upon  the  institution 
of  common  property  bringing  a  common  interest  to  all.  Where 
such  changes  came  in  the  bud,  what  might  we  not  expect  from 
the  flower?  If  a  partial  experiment  in  Socialism,  with  all  the 
drawbacks  of  an  experiment,  will  achieve  such  magnificent  re- 
sults what  could  we  not  rightfully  look  for  were  all  Ireland,  all 
the  world,  so  organised  on  the  basis  of  common  property,  and 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  95 

exploitation  and  mastership  forever  abolished? 

The  downfall  of  the  Association  came  as  a  result  of  the  in- 
iquitous land  laws  of  Great  Britain  refusing  to  recognise  the 
right  of  such  a  community  to  hold  a  lease  or  to  act  as  tenants. 
The  landlord,  Mr.  Vandeleur,  lost  his  fortune  in  a  gambling 
transaction  in  Dublin,  and  fled  in  disgrace  unable  to  pay  His  debts. 
The  persons  who  took  over  the  estate  under  bankruptcy  proceed- 
ings refused  to  recognise  the  community,  insisted  upon  treating  its 
members  as  common  labourers  on  the  estate,  seized  upon  the 
buildings  and  grounds  and  broke  up  the  Association. 

So  Ralahine  ended.  But  in  the  rejuvenated  Ireland  of  the 
future  the  achievement  of  those  simple  peasants  will  be  dwelt 
upon  with  admiration  as  a  great  and  important  landmark  in  the 
march  of  the  human  race  towards  its  complete  social  emancipa- 
tion. Ralahine  was  an  Irish  point  of  interrogation  erected 
amidst  the  wildernesses  of  capitalist  thought  and  feudal  practice, 
challenging  both  in  vain  for  an  answer.  Other  smaller  com- 
munities were  also  established  in  Ireland  during  the  same  pe- 
riod. A  Lord  Wallscourt  established  a  somewhat  similar  com- 
munity on  his  estate  in  County  Galway ;  The  Quarterly  Review  of 
November,  1819,  states  that  there  was  then  a  small  community 
existent  nine  miles  outside  Dublin,  which  held  thirty  acres, 
supported  a  priest  and  a  school  of  300  children,  had  erected 
buildings,  made  and  sold  jaunting  cars,  and  comprised  butchers, 
carpenters  and  wheelwrights;  the  Quakers  of  Dublin  established 
a  Co-Operative  Woolen  Factory,  which  flourished  until  it  was 
destroyed  by  litigation  set  on  foot  by  dissatisfied  members  who 
had  been  won  over  to  the  side  of  rival  capitalists,  and  a  com- 
munal home  was  established  and  long  maintained  in  Dublin  by 
members  of  the  same  religious  sect,  but  without  any  other 
motive  than  that  of  helping  forward  the  march  of  social  amelior- 
ation. We  understand  that  the  extensive  store  of  Messrs.  Ganly 
&  Sons  on  Usher's  Quay  in  Dublin  was  the  home  of  this  com- 
munity, who  lived,  worked  and  enjoyed  themselves  in  the  spa- 
cious halls,  and  slept  in  the  smaller  rooms  of  what  is  now  the 
property  of  a  capitalist  auctioneer. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

A  CHAPTER  OF  HORRORS:  DANIEL  O'CONNELL  AND  THE  WORK- 
ING CLASS. 

"Tis  civilisation,  so  ye  say,  and  cannot  be  changed  for  the  weakness  of 

men, 
Take  heed,  take  heed,  'tis  a  dangerous  way  to  drive  the  wild  wolf  to  the 

end  of  his  den. 
Take  heed  of  your  civilisation,  ye,  'tis  a  pyramid  built  upon  quivering 

hearts, 
There  are  times,  as  Paris  in  '93,  when  the  commonest  men  play  terrible 

parts. 
Take  heed  of  /our  progress,  its  feet  are  shod  with  the  souls  it  slew  with 

its  own  i.  Dilutions, 
Submission  is  good,  but  the  order  of  God  may  flame  the  torch  of  the 

revolutions." 

— John  Boyle  O'Reilly. 

FOR  both  Ireland  and  Great  Britain  the  period  between  the 
winning  of  Catholic  Emancipation  (1829)  and  the  year  1850  was 
marked  by  great  misery  and  destitution  amongst  the  producing 
classes,  accompanied  by  abortive  attempts  at  revolution  in  both 
countries,  and  the  concession  of  some  few  unimportant  political 
and  social  reforms.  In  Ireland  the  first  move  against  the  forces 
of  privilege  was  the  abolition  of  the  Tithes,  or,  more  correctly 
speaking,  the  abolition  of  the  harsh  and  brutal  features  attendant 
upon  the  collection  of  the  tithes.  The  clergy  of  the  Episcopalian 
Church,  the  Church  by  law  established  in  Ireland,  were  legally 
entitled  to  levy  upon  the  people  of  each  district  irrespective 
of  religion,  a  certain  tax  for  the  upkeep  of  that  Church  and  its 
ministers.  The  fact  that  this  was  in  conformity  with  the  practice 
of  the  Catholic  Church  in  countries  where  it  was  dominant  did 
not,  of  course,  make  this  any  more  palatable  to  the  Catholic 
peasantry  of  Ireland,  who  continually  saw  a  part  of  their  crops 
seized  upon  and  sold  to  maintain  a  clergy  whose  ministrations 
they  never  attended  and  whose  religion  they  detested.  Eventu- 
ally their  discontent  at  the  injustice  grew  so  acute  as  to  flare 

96 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  97 

forth  in  open  rebellion,  and  accordingly  all  over  Ireland  the  ten- 
ants began  to  resist  the  collection  of  tithes  by  every  means  in 
their  power. 

The  Epicsopalian  Clergymen  called  on  the  aid  of  the  law, 
and,  escorted  by  police  and  military,  seized  the  produce  of  the 
poor  tenants  and  carried  them  off  to  be  sold  at  auction;  the 
peasantry,  on  the  other  hand,  collected  at  dead  of  night,  and 
carried  off  crops  and  cattle  from  farms  upon  which  the  distraint 
was  to  be  made,  and  when  that  was  impossible  they  strove  by  acts 
of  violence  to  terrorise  auctioneers  and  buyers  from  consum- 
mating the  sale.  Many  a  bright  young  life  was  extinguished  on 
the  gallows  or  rotted  away  in  prison  cells  as  a  result  of  this 
attempt  to  sustain  a  hated  religion  by  contributions  exacted  at 
the  point  of  a  bayonet,  until  eventually  the  struggle  assumed  all 
the  aspect  of  a  civil  war.  At  several  places  when  the  military 
were  returning  from  raiding  the  farms  of  some  poor  peasant  the 
country  people  gathered,  erected  barricades,  and  opposed  their 
passage  by  force.  Significantly  enough  of  the  temper  and  quali- 
ties of  the  people  in  those  engagements,  they  generally  succeeded 
in  rescuing  their  crops  and  cattle  from  the  police  and  military, 
and  in  demonstrating  that  Ireland  still  possessed  all  the  ma- 
terial requisite  for  armed  rebellion. 

In  one  conflict  at  Newtownbarry  twelve  peasants  were  shot 
and  twenty  fatally  wounded;  in  another  at  Carrigshock  eleven 
policemen  were  killed  and  seventeen  wounded;  and  at  a  great 
fight  at  Rathcormack,  twelve  peasants  were  killed  in  a  fight  with 
a  large  body  of  military  and  armed  police.  Eye-witnesses  de- 
clared that  the  poor  farmers  and  labourers  engaged  stood  the 
charge  and  volleys  of  the  soldiers  as  firmly  as  if  they  had  been 
seasoned  troops,  a  fact  that  impressed  the  Government  more  than 
a  million  speeches  would  have  done.  The  gravity  of  the  crisis 
was  enhanced  by  the  contrast  between  the  small  sum  often  in- 
volved and  the  bloodshed  necessary  to  recover  it.  Thus  at 
Rathcormack  the  twelve  peasants  were  massacred  in  an  attempt 
to  save  the  effects  of  a  poor  widow  from  being  sold  to  pay  a 
sum  of  forty  shillings  due  as  tithes.  The  ultimate  effect  of  all 
this  resistance  was  the  passage  of  a  "Tithes  Commutation  Act" 
by  which  the  collection  of  tithes  was  abolished,  and  the  substi- 
tution in  its  place  of  a  "Tithe  Rent  Charge"  by  means  of  which 
the  sums  necessary  for  the  support  of  the  Episcopalian  clergy 
were  included  in  the  rent  and  paid  as  part  of  that  tribute  to  the 
landed  aristocracy.  In  other  words,  the"  economic  drain  remained, 
but  it  was  deprived  of  all  the  more  odious  and  galling  features 


98  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

of  its  collection.  The  secret  Ribbon  and  Whiteboy  Societies 
were  the  most  effective  weapons  of  the  peasantry  in  this  fight, 
and  to  their  activities  the  victory  is  largely  to  be  attributed.  The 
politicians  gave  neither  help  nor  countenance  to  the  fight,  and 
save  for  the  advocacy  of  one  small  Dublin  newspaper,  con- 
ducted by  a  small  but  brilliant  band  of  young  Protestant  writers, 
no  journal  in  all  Ireland  championed  their  cause.  For  the  Cath- 
olic clergy  it  is  enough  to  say  that  while  this  tithe  war  was 
being  waged  they  were  almost  universally  silent  about  that 
4  grevious  sin  of  secret  conspiracy"  upon  which  they  are  usually 
so  eloquent.  We  would  not  dare  to  say  that  they  recognised 
that  as  the  secret  societies  were  doing  their  work  against  a 
rival  priesthood,  it  were  better  to  be  sparing  in  their  denuncia- 
tions for  the  time  being;  perhaps  that  is  not  the  explanation, 
but  at  all  events  it  is  noteworthy  that  as  soon  as  the  tithe  war 
was  won  all  the  old  stock  invectives  against  every  kind  of  extra 
constitutional  action  were  immediately  renewed. 

Contemporaneously  with  this  tithe  war  had  grown  up  the 
agitation  for  repeal  of  the  Legislative  Union  led  by  Daniel 
O'Connell,  and  supported  by  the  large  body  of  the  middle 
classes,  and  by  practically  all  the  Catholic  clergy.  At  the  outset 
of  this  agitation  the  Irish  working  class,  partly  because  they  ac- 
cepted O'Connell's  explanation  of  the  decay  of  Irish  trade  as 
due  to  the  Union,  and  partly  because  they  did  not  believe  he  was 
sincere  in  his  professions  of  loyalty  to  the  English  monarchy, 
nor  in  his  desire  to  limit  his  aims  to  repeal,  enthusiastically  en- 
dorsed and  assisted  his  agitation.  He,  on  his  part,  incorporated 
the  trades  bodies  in  his  association  with  rights  equal  to  that  of 
regularly  enrolled  members,  a  proceeding  which  evoked  consider- 
able dissent  from  many  quarters.  Thus  the  "Irish  Monthly 
Magazine"  (Dublin),  a  rabidly  O'Connellite  journal,  in  its  issue 
o-f  September,  1832,  complains  that  the  National  Union  (of 
Repealers)  is  in  danger  because  "there  is  a  contemporary  union 
composed  of  the  tradesmen  and  operative  classes,  the  members  of 
which  are  qualified  to  vote  at  its  sittings,  and  who  are  in  every 
respect  put  upon  a  perfect  equality  with  the  members  of  the 
National  Union."  And  in  its  December  number  of  the  same  year 
it  returns  to  the  charge  with  the  significant  statement  that  "In 
fact  we  apprehend  great  mischief  and  little  good  from  the 
trades  union  as  at  present  constituted."  The  representative  of 
the  English  King  in  Ireland,  Lord  Lieutenant  Anglesey,  appar- 
ently coincided  in  the  opinion  of  this  follower  of  O'Connell  as  to 
the  danger  of  Irish  trade  unions  in  politics,  for  when  the  Dublin 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  99 

trades  bodies  projected  a  mammoth  demonstration  in  favour 
of  Repeal,  he  immediately  proclaimed  it,  and  ordered  the  mili- 
tary to  suppress  it,  if  necessary  by  armed  force.  But  as  O'Con- 
nell  grew  in  strength  in  the  country  and  attracted  to  himself 
more  and  more  of  the  capitalist  and  professional  classes  in  Ire- 
land, and  as  he  became  more  necessary  to  the  schemes  of  the 
Whig  politicians  in  England,  and  thought  these  latter  more 
necessary  to  his  success,  he  ceased  to  play  for  the  favour  of 
organised  labour,  and  gradually  developed  into  the  most  bitter 
and  unscrupulous  enemy  of  trade  unionism  Ireland  has  yet 
produced,  signalling  the  trades  unions  of  Dublin  out  always  for 
his  most  venomous  attack. 

In  1835  O'Connell  took  his  seat  on  the  Ministerial  side  of 
the  House  of  Commons  as  a  supporter  of  the  Whig  Government. 
At  that  time  the  labouring  population  of  England  were  the  most 
exploited,  degraded,  and  almost  dehumanised  of  all  the  peoples 
of  Europe.  The  tale  of  their  condition  reveals  such  inhumanity 
on  the  part  of  their  masters,  such  woeful  degradation  on  the 
side  of  the  toilers,  that  were  it  not  attested  by  the  sober  record 
of  witnesses  before  various  Parliamentary  Commissions  the 
record  would  be  entirely  unbelievable.  Women  worked  down  in 
coal  mines  almost  naked  for  a  pitiful  wage,  often  giving  birth  to 
children  when  surprised  by  the  pains  of  parturition  amidst  the 
darkness  and  gloom  of  their  places  of  employment;  little  boys 
and  girls  were  employed  drawing  heavy  hutches  (wagons)  of 
coal  along  the  pit  floors  by  means  of  a  strap  around  their  bodies 
and  passing  through  between  their  little  legs;  in  cotton  factories 
little  tots  of  eight,  seven,  and  even  six  years  of  age  of  both 
sexes  were  kept  attending  machinery,  being  hired  like  slaves  from 
workhouses  for  that  purpose,  and  worked  twelve,  fourteen,  and 
even  sixteen  hours  per  day,  living,  sleeping,  and  working  under 
conditions  which  caused  them  to  die  off  as  with  a  plague;  in 
pottery  works,  bakeshops,  clothing  factories  and  workrooms  the 
overwork  and  unhealthy  conditions  of  employment  led  to  such 
suffering  and  degradation  and  shortening  of  life  that  the  very 
existence  of  the  working  class  was  endangered.  In  the  agricul- 
tural districts  the  sufferings  of  the  poor  were  so  terrible  that  the 
English  agricultural  labourer — the  most  stolidly  patient,  unim- 
agniative  person  on  the  face  of  the  earth — broke  out  into  riots, 
machine  breaking,  and  hay-rick  burning.  As  in  Ireland,  Captain 
Rock  or  Captain  Moonlight  has  been  supposed  to  be  the  presid- 
ing genius  of  the  nocturnal  revolts  of  the  peasantry,  so  in 
England,  Captain  Swing,  an  equally  mythical  personage,  took 


100  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

the  blame  or  the  credit.  In  a  booklet  circulated  amongst  the 
English  agricultural  labourers,  Captain  Swing  is  made  to  say: 
•*'!  am  not  the  author  of  these  burnings.  These  fires  are  caused 
by  farmers  having  been  turned  out  of  their  lands  to  make  room 
for  foxes,  peasants  confined  two  years  in  prison  for  picking  up 
a  dead  partridge,  and  parsons  taking  a  poor  man's  only  cow  for 
the  tithe  of  his  cabbage  garden."  So  great  was  the  distress,  so 
brutal  the  laws,  and  so  hopelessly  desperate  the  labourers  that 
in  the  Special  Assize  held  at  Winchester  in  December,  1830,  no 
less  than  three  hundred  prisoners  were  put  upon  trial,  a  great 
number  of  whom  were  sentenced  to  death.  Of  the  number  so 
condemned,  six  were  actually  hanged,  twenty  transported  for 
life,  and  the  rest  for  smaller  periods.  We  are  told  in  the 
'•'English  Via  Dolorosa,"  of  William  Heath,  that  "a  child  of 
fourteen  had  sentence  of  death  recorded  against  him;  and  two 
brothers,  one  twenty,  the  other  nineteen,  were  ruthlessly  hanged 
on  Penenden  Heath,  whither  they  were  escorted  by  a  regiment 
of  Scots  Greys."  As  to  whom  was  responsible  for  all  this  suffer- 
ing, contemporary  witnesses  leave  no  doubt.  The  London  Times, 
most  conservative  of  all  capitalist  papers,  in  its  issue  of  Decem- 
ber 27,  1830,  declared: — "We  do  affirm  that  the  actions  of  this 
pitiable  class  of  men  (the  labourers)  are  a  commentary  on  the 
treatment  experienced  by  them  at  the  hands  of  the  upper  and 
middling  classes.  The  present  population  must  be  provided  for 
in  body  and  spirit  on  more  liberal  and  Christian  principles,  or 
the  whole  mass  of  labourers  will  start  into  legions  of  banditti — 
banditti  less  criminal  than  those  who  have  made  them  so,  those 
who  by  a  just  but  fearful  retribution  will  soon  become  their 
victims."  And  in  1833  a  Parliamentary  Commission  reported 
that  "The  condition  of  the  agricultural  labourers  was  brutal  and 
wretched ;  their  children  during  the  day  were  struggling  with  the 
pigs  for  food,  and  at  night  were  huddled  down  on  damp  straw 
•tinder  a  roof  of  rotten  thatch/' 

In  the  large  towns  the  same  state  of  rebellion  prevailed,  the 
military  were  continually  on  duty,  and  so  many  people  were 
killed  that  the  coroners  ceased  to  hold  inquests.  Such  was  the 
state  of  England — misery  and  revolt  beneath,  and  sanguinary 
repression  coupled  with  merciless  greed  above — at  the  time  when 
O'Connell,  taking  his  seat  in  Parliament,  threw  all  his  force 
on  the  side  of  capitalist  privilege  and  against  social  reform. 

In  1838  five  cotton  spinners  in  Glasgow,  in  Scotland,  were 
sentenced  to  seven  years'  transportation  for  acts  they  had  com- 
mitted in  connection  with  trade  union  combination  to  better  the 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  )«i 

miserable  condition  of  their  class.  As  the  punishment  was  uni- 
versally felt  to  be  excessive,  even  in  the  brutal  spirit  of  the 
times,  a  Mr.  Wakley,  Member  of  Parliament  for  Finsbury,  o» 
the  13th  of  February  of  that  year,  brought  forward  a  motion: 
in  the  House  of  Commons  for  a  "Select  Committee  to  enquire 
into  the  constitution,  practices,  and  effects  of  the  Association! 
of  Cotton  Operatives  of  Glasgow."  O'Connell  opposed  the 
motion,  and  used  the  opportunity  to  attack  the  Irish  trade  unions. 
He  said : — 

"There  was  no  tyranny  equal  to  that  which  was  exercise<t 
by  the  trade  unionists  in  Dublin  over  their  fellow  labourers. 
One  rule  of  the  workmen  prescribed  a  minimum  rate  of  wages* 
so  that  the  best  workmen  received  no  more  than  the  worst. 
Another  part  of  their  system  was  directed  towards  depriving 
the  masters  of  all  freedom  in  their  power  of  selecting  workmen. 
The  names  of  the  workmen  being  inscribed  in  a  book,  and  the 
employer  compelled  to  take  the  first  on  the  list." 

He  said  that  at  Bandon  a  large  factory  had  been  closed^ 
through  the  efforts  of  the  men  to  get  higher  wages,  ditto  at 
Belfast,  and  "it  was  calculated  that  wages  to  the  amount  of 
£500,000  per  year  were  lost  to  Dublin  by  trade  unions.  The* 
combination  of  tailors  in  that  city,  for  instance,  had  raised  the 
price  of  clothes  to  such  a  pitch  that  it  was  worth  a  person's  while 
to  go  to  Glasgow  and  wait  a  couple  of  days  for  a  suit,  the  dif- 
ference in  the  price  paying  the  expense  of  the  trip."  He  also 
ascribed  the  disappearance  of  the  shipbuilding  trade  from  Dub- 
lin to  the  evil  effects  of  trade  unions. 

Because  of  O'Connell's  speech  his  friends,  the  Whig  Govern- 
ment, appointed  a  committee,  not  to  enquire  into  the  Glasgow 
cases,  but  to  investigate  the  acts  of  the  Irish,  and  especially  of 
the  Dublin,  trade  unions.  The  Special  Committee  sat  and  col- 
lected two  volumes  of  evidence,  O'Connell  producing  a  nurnbtr 
of  witnesses  to  bear  testimony  against  the  Irish  trade  unionists,, 
but  the  report  of  the  committee  was  never  presented  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  June  of  the  same  year,  1838,  O'Connell 
had  another  opportunity  to  vent  his  animus  against  the  working 
class,  and  serve  the  interest  of  English  and  Irish  capitalism,. 
and  was  not  slow  to  take  advantage  of  it.  In  the  year  1833,,. 
mainly  owing  to  the  efforts  of  the  organised  factory  operatives^ 
and  some  high-spirited  philanthropists,  a  law  had  been  enacted* 
forbidding  the  employment  of  children  under  nine  years  of  age 
in  factories  except  silk  mills,  and  forbidding  those  under  thirteen- 
from  working  more  than  forty-eight  hours  per  week,  or  nine 


102  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

hours  per  day.  The  ages  mentioned  will  convey  to  the  reader 
some  idea  of  how  infantile  flesh  and  blood  had  been  sacrificed 
to  sate  the  greed  of  the  propertied  class.  Yet  this  eminently  mod- 
erate enactment  was  fiercely  hated  by  the  godly  capitalists  of 
England,  and  by  every  unscrupulous  device  they  could  contrive 
they  strove  to  circumvent  it.  So  constant  and  effective  was  their 
evasion  of  its  merciful  provisions  that  on  the  23rd  of  June  the 
famous  friend  of  the  factory  operatives,  Lord  Ashley,  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  moved  as  an  amendment  to  the  Order  of 
the  Day  the  second  reading  of  a  ''Bill  to  more  effectually  regulate 
Factory  Works,"  its  purpose  being  to  prevent  or  punish  any  fur- 
ther infringement  of  the  Act  of  1833.  O'Connell  opposed  the 
motion,  and  attempted  to  justify  the  infringement  of  the  law  by 
the  employers  by  stating  that  "they  (Parliament)  had  legislated 
against  the  nature  of  things,  and  against  the  right  of  industry." 
"Let  them  not,"  he  said,  "be  guilty  of  the  childish  folly  of  regu- 
lating the  labour  of  adults,  and  go  about  parading  before  the 
world  their  ridiculous  humanity,  which  would  end  by  converting 
their  manufacturers  into  beggars."  The  phrase  about  regulating 
the  labour  of  adults  was  borrowed  from  the  defence  set  up  by 
the  capitalists  that  preventing  the  employment  of  children  also 
interfered  with  the  labour  of  adults — freeborn  Englishmen! 
O'Connell  was  not  above  using  this  clap-trap,  as  he  on  the  previous 
occasion  had  not  been  above  making  the  lying  pretence  that  the 
enforcement  of  a  minimum  wage  prevented  the  payment  of  high 
wages  to  any  specially  skilled  artisan. 

On  this  question  of  the  attitude  to  be  taken  up  towards  the 
claims  of  labour  O'Connell  differed  radically  with  one  of  his  most 
capable  lieutenants,  Feargus  O'Connor.  The  latter  being  re- 
turned to  Parliament  as  a  Repealer  was  struck  by  the  miserable 
condition  of  the  real  people  of  England  in  whose  interests  Ire- 
land was  supposed  to  be  governed,  and  as  the  result  of  his  inves- 
tigation into  its  cause  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  basis  of 
the  oppression  of  Ireland  was  economic,  that  labour  in  England 
was  oppressed  by  the  same  class  and  by  the  operation  of  the  same 
causes  as  had  impoverished  and  ruined  Ireland,  and  that  the  so- 
lution of  the  problem  in  both  countries  required  the  union  of  the 
democracies  in  one  common  battle  against  their  oppressors.  He 
earnestly  strove  to  impress  this  view  upon  O'Connell,  only  to  find 
that  in  the  latter  class  feeling  was  much  stronger  than  desire  for 
Irish  National  freedom,  and  that  he,  O'Connell,  felt  himself  to 
be  much  more  akin  to  the  propertied  class  of  England  than  to  the 
working  class  of  Ireland.  This  was  proven  by  his  actions  in  the 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  103 

cases  above  cited.    This  divergence  of  opinion  between  O'Connelil 
and  O'Connor  closed  Ireland  to  the  latter  and  gave  him  to  the 
Chartists  as  one  of  their  most  fearless  and  trusted  leaders.    Whet« 
he  died,  more  than  50,000  toilers  marched  in  the  funeral  proces 
sion  which  bore  his  remains  to  his  last  resting-place.    He  was  on<? 
of  the  first  of  that  long  list  of  Irish  fighters  in  Great  Britain 
whose  unselfish  sacrifices  have  gone  to  make  a  record  for  ac 
"English"  labour  movement.    That  the  propertied  and  oppressing 
classes  were  well  aware  of  the  value  of  O'Connell's  services 
against  the  democracy,  and  were  believed  to  be  grateful   for 
the  same  was   attested  by  the  action  of   Richard   Lalor   Shiel 
when,  defending  him  during  the  famous  State  trials,  he  claimed 
the  consideration  of  the  Court  for  O'Connell,  because  he  had 
stood  between  the  people  of  Ireland  and  the  people  of  England, 
and  so  "prevented  a  junction  which  would  be  formidable  enough 
to  overturn  any  administration  that  could  be  formed."     But  as 
zealous  as  O'Connell  and  the  middle  class  repealers  were  to  pre- 
vent any  international  action  of  the  democracies,  the  Irish  Work- 
ing Class  were  as  enthusiastic  in  their  desire  to  consummate  it. 
Irish  Chartist  Associations  sprang  up  all  over  the  island,  and 
we  are  informed  by  a  writer  in  the  "United  Irishmen"  of  John 
Mitchel,  1848,  that  in  Dublin  they  had  grown  so  strong  and  so 
hostile  to  O'Connellism  that  at  one  time  negotiations  were  in 
progress  for  a  public  debate  between  the  Liberator  and  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  Dublin  trades.     But  upon  the  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment of  O'Connell,  he  continues,  the  Working  Class  were 
persuaded  to  abandon  their  separate  organisations  for  the  sake 
of  presenting  a  common  front  to  the  Government,  a  step  they 
afterwards   regretted.     To  this  letter  John   Mitchel,  as   editor, 
appended  a  note  reminding  his  readers  of  the  anti-labour  record 
of  O'Connell,  and  adducing  it  as  a  further  reason  for  repudiating 
his  leadership.    Yet  it  is  curious  that  in  his  "History  of  Ireland" 
Mitchel  omits  all  reference  to  this  disgraceful  side  of  O'ConnelFs 
career,  as  do  indeed  all  the  other  Irish  "Historians."     If  silence 
gives  consent,  then  all  our  history  ( ?)  writing  scribes  have  con- 
sented to,  and  hence  approved  of,  this  suppression  of  the  facts 
of  history  in  order  to  assist  in  perpetuating  the  blindness  and  the 
subjection  of  labour. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

OUR  IRISH  GIRONDINS  SACRIFICE  THE  IRISH  PEASANTRY  UPON 
THE  ALTAR  OF  PRIVATE  PROPERTY. 

"There  is  a  class  of  Revolutionists  named  Girondins  whose  fate  in 
history  is  remarkable  enough.  Men  who  rebel,  and  urge  the  lower  classes 
to  rebel,  ought  to  have  other  than  formulas  to  go  upon.  Men  who  discern 
in  the  misery  of  the  toiling,  complaining  millions,  not  misery  but  only  a 
raw  material  which  can  be  wrought  upon  and  traded  in  for  one's  own 
poor  hide-bound  theories  and  egoisms,  to  whom  millions  of  living  fellow- 
creatures  with  beating  hearts  in  their  bosoms — beating,  suffering,  hoping — 
are  'masses,'  mere  explosive  masses,  for  blowing  down  Bastiles  with,  for 
voting  at  hustings  for  'us,'  such  men  are  of  the  questionable  species." 

— Thomas  Carlyle. 

THE  outbreak  of  the  famine,  which  commenced  on  a  small 
scale  in  1845,  and  increased  in  area  and  intensity  until  1849, 
brought  to  a  head  the  class  antagonism  in  Ireland,  of  which  the 
rupture  with  the  trades  was  one  manifestation,  and  again  re- 
vealed the  question  of  property  as  the  test  by  which  the  con- 
duct of  public  men  is  regulated,  even  when  those  men  assume  the 
garb  of  revolution.  Needless  to  say,  this  is  not  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  history  of  that  awful  period  we  are  given  by  the 
orthodox  Irish  or  English  writers  upon  that  subject.  Irish  Na- 
tionalists of  all  stripes  and  English  critics  of  every  variety 
agree  with  wonderful  unanimity  in  ascribing  a  split  in  the  Repeal 
Association  which  led  to  the  formation  by  the  seceders  of  the 
body  known  as  the  "Irish  Confederation"  to  the  academic  ques- 
tion of  whether  force  might  or  might  not  be  employed  to  achieve 
a  political  end.  The  majority  of  the  Repeal  Association,  we 
are  told,  subscribed  to  the  principle  enunciated  by  O'Connell  that 
"the  greatest  sublunary  blessings  were  not  worth  the  shedding 
of  a  single  drop  of  human  blood,"  and  John  Mitchel,  Father 
Meehan,  Gavan  Duffy,  Thomas  Francis  Meagher,  Devin  Reilly, 
William  Smith  O'Brien,  Fintan  Lalor,  and  others  repudiated 
that  doctrine,  and  on  this  point  of  purely  theoretical  divergence 

104 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  105 

the  secession  from  O'Connell  took  place.  It  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  any  large  number  of  Irishmen  ever  held  such  a  doctrine 
seriously;  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  Irish  Catholic  priesthood, 
O'Connell's  chief  lieutenants,  did  not  hold  nor  counsel  such  a 
doctrine  during  the  Tithe  War.  O"Connell  himself  had  declared 
that  he  would  willingly  join  in  helping  England  in  "bringing  down 
the  American  eagle  in  its  highest  pride  of  flight,"  which  surely 
would  have  involved  war,  and  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
one  occasion  in  reply  to  Lord  Lyndhurst,  who  had  characterised 
the  Irish  as  "aliens  in  blood,  in  language,  and  in  religion," 
Richard  Lalor  Shiel,  a  champion  of  O'Connellism,  had  delivered 
a  magnificent  oration  vaunting  of  the  prowess  of  the  Irish  sol- 
diers in  the  English  army.  In  passing  we  note  that  Shiel  con- 
sidered the  above  phrase  of  Lord  Lyndhurst  an  insult;  modern 
Irish  Nationalists  triumphantly  assert  the  idea  embodied  in 
that  phrase  as  the  real  basis  of  Irish  nationalism. 

Nor  yet  were  the  seceders,  the  Young  Irelanders  as  they 
were  called,  in  favour  of  physical  froce,  save  as  a  subject  for 
flights  in  poetry  and  oratory.  In  reality  the  secession  took 
place  on  a  false  issue;  the  majority  on  either  side  being  disin- 
clined to  admit,  even  if  they  recognised,  the  real  issue  dividing 
them.  That  issue  was  the  old  and  ever  present  one  of  the 
Democratic  principle  in  human  society  versus  the  'Aristocratic. 
The  Young  Irelanders,  young  and  enthusiastic,  felt  the  force 
of  the  Democratic  principle  then  agitating  European  society, 
indeed  the  very  name  of  Young  Ireland  was  an  adaptation  of  the 
names  used  by  the  Italian  revolutionist  Mazzini  for  the  revolu- 
tionary associations,  Young  Italy,  Young  Switzerland,  Young 
France,  and  Young  Germany,  he  founded  after  the  year  1831. 
And  as  the  progress  of  the  revolutionary  movement  on  the 
Continent,  accompanied  as  it  was  by  the  popularisation  of  So- 
cialistic ideas  among  the  revolutionary  masses,  synchronised  with 
the  falling  apart  of  the  social  system  in  Ireland  owing  to  the 
famine,  the  leaders  of  the  Young  Ireland  party  responded  to 
and  moved  along  with  the  revolutionary  current  of  events  with- 
out ever  being  able  to  comprehend  the  depth  and  force  of  the 
stream  upon  whose  surface  they  were  embarked.  The  truth 
of  this  is  apparent  to  all  who  study  their  action  when  at  last  the 
long  talked  of  day  for  revolution  had  arrived.  By  that  time, 
1848,  Ireland  was  in  the  throes  of  the  greatest  famine  in  her 
history. 

A  few  words  explanatory  of  that  famine  may  not  be  amiss 
to  some  of  our  readers.  The  staple  food  of  the  Irish  peasantry 


106  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

was  the  potato;  all  other  agricultural  produce,  grains  and  cattle, 
was  sold  to  pay  the  landlord's  rent.  The  ordinary  value  of  the 
potato  crop  was  yearly  approximately  twenty  million  pounds  in 
English  money ;  in  1848,  in  the  midst  of  the  famine,  the  value  of 
agricultural  produce  in  Ireland  was  £44,958,120.  In  that  year 
the  entire  potato  crop  was  a  failure,  and  to  that  fact  the  famine 
is  placidly  attributed,  yet  those  figures  amply  prove  that  there 
was  food  enough  in  the  country  to  feed  double  the  population 
were  the  laws  of  capitalist  society  set  aside,  and  human  rights 
elevated  to  their  proper  position.  It  is  a  common  saying  amongst 
Irish  Nationalists  that  "Providence  sent  the  potato  blight  but 
England  made  the  famine."  .The  statement  is  true,  and  only 
needs  amending  by  adding  that  "England  made  the  famine  by  a 
rigid  application  of  the  economic  principles  that  lie  at  the  base 
of  capitalist  society."  No  man  who  accepts  capitalist  society 
and  the  laws  thereof  can  logically  find  fault  with  the  statesmen 
of  England  for  their  acts  in  that  awful  period.  They  stood  for 
the  rights  of  property  and  free  competition,  and  philosophically 
accepted  their  consequences  upon  Ireland ;  the  leaders  of  the 
Irish  people  also  stood  for  the  rights  of  property,  and  refused 
to  abandon  them  even  when  they  saw  their  consequences  in  the 
slaughter  by  famine  of  over  a  million  of  the  Irish  toilers.  The 
first  failure  of  the  potato  crop  took  place  in  1845,  and  between 
September  and  December  of  that  year  515  deaths  from  hunger 
were  registered,  although  3,250,000  quarters  of  wheat  and  num- 
berless cattle  had  been  exported.  From  that  time  until  1850  the 
famine  spread,  and  the  exports  of  food  continued.  Thus  in  1848 
it  was  estimated  that  300,000  persons  died  of  hunger  and  1,826,132 
quarters  of  wheat  and  barley  were  exported.  Typhus  fever, 
which  always  follows  on  the  heels  of  hunger,  struck  down  as 
many  as  perished  directly  of  famine,  until  at  last  it  became  im- 
possible in  many  districts  to  get  sufficient  labourers  with  strength 
enough  to  dig  separate  graves  for  the  dying.  Recourse  was  had 
to  famine  pits,  into  which  the  bodies  were  thrown  promiscuously ; 
whole  families  died  in  their  miserable  cabins,  and  lay  and  rotted 
there,  and  travellers  in  remote  parts  of  the  country  often  stumbled 
upon  villages  in  which  the  whole  population  had  died  of  hunger. 
In  1847,  "black  '47,"  250,000  died  of  fever;  21,770  of  starvation. 
Owing  to  the  efforts  of  emigration  agents  and  remittances  sent 
from  relatives  abroad  in  the  same  year,  89,783  persons  embarked 
for  Canada.  They  were  flying  from  hunger,  but  they  could  not 
fly  from  the  fever  that  follows  in  the  wake  of  hunger,  and  6,100 
died  and  were  thrown  overboard  on  the  voyage,  4,100  died  on 


107 

their  arrival  in  Canada,  5,200  in  hospitals,  and  1,900  in  interior 
towns. 

Great  Britain  was  nearer  than  America,  and  many  who 
could  not  escape  to  the  latter  rushed  to  the  inhospitable  shores  of 
the  former ;  but  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  the  steamship 
companies,  and  they  raised  the  rates  upon  all  passengers  by 
steerage  to  an  almost  prohibitive  price.  In  this  flight  to  Eng- 
land occurred  one  of  the  most  fearful  tragedies  of  all  history,  a 
tragedy  which,  in  our  opinion,  surpasses  that  of  the  Black  Hole 
of  Calcutta  in  its  accumulation  of  fearful  and  gruesome  horrors. 
On  December  2,  1848,  a  steamer  left  Sligo  with  200  steerage 
passengers  on  board  bound  for  Liverpool.  On  that  bleak  north- 
western coast  such  a  passage  is  at  all  times  rough,  and  storms  are 
both  sudden  and  fierce.  Such  a  storm  came  on  during  the  night, 
and  as  the  unusual  number  of  passengers  crowded  the  deck  the 
crew  unceremoniously  and  brutally  drove  them  below  decks,  and 
battened  down  the  hatches  to  prevent  their  re-emergence.  In  the 
best  of  weather  the  steerage  of  such  a  coasting  vessel  is,  even 
when  empty  of  human  freight,  foul,  suffocating  and  unbearable; 
the  imagination  fails  to  realise  what  it  must  have  been  on  that 
awful  night  when  200  poor  wretches  were  driven  into  its  depths. 
To  add  to  the  horror,  when  some  of  the  more  desperate  beat 
upon  the  hatches  and  demanded  release  the  mate,  in  a  paroxysm 
of  rage,  ordered  tarpaulin  to  be  thrown  across  the  opening  to 
stifle  their  cries.  It  did  stifle  the  cries,  it  also  excluded  the  air 
and  the  light,  and  there  in  that  inferno  those  200  human  beings 
fought,  struggled  and  gasped  for  air  while  the  elements  warred 
outside  and  the  frail  tub  of  a  ship  was  tossed  upon  the  surface  of 
the  waters.  At  last,  when  some  one  stronger  than  the  rest  man- 
aged to  break  through  and  reach  the  deck,  he  confronted  the 
ship's  officers  with  the  news  that  their  brutality  had  made  them 
murderers,  that  grim  death  was  reaping  his  harvest  amongst  the 
passengers.  It  was  too  true.  Out  of  the  200  passengers  battened 
down  below  decks,  72,  more  than  a  third  of  the  entire  number, 
had  expired,  suffocated  for  want  of  air  or  mangled  to  death  in 
the  blind  struggle  of  despair  in  the  darkness.  Such  is  the  tale 
of  that  voyage  of  the  ship  "Londonderry,"  surely  the  most  horri- 
ble tale  of  the  sea  in  the  annals  of  any  white  people! 

Amidst  such  conditions  the  Irish  Confederation  had  been 
preaching  the  moral  righteousness  of  rebellion,  and  discoursing 
learnedly  in  English  to  a  starving  people,  the  most  of  whom  knew 
only  Irish,  about  the  historical  examples  of  Holland,  Belgium, 
Poland,  and  the  Tyrol.  A  few  men,  notably  John  Mitchel,  James 


108  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

Fintan  Lalor,  and  Thomas  Devin  Reilly,  to  their  credit  be  it  said, 
openly  advocated,  as  the  first  duty  of  the  people,  the  refusal  to 
pay  rents,  the  retention  of  their  crops  to  feed  their  own  families, 
and  the  breaking  up  of  bridges  and  tearing  up  of  railroad  lines 
in  order  to  prevent  the  removal  of  food  from  the  country.  Had 
such  advice  been  followed  by  the  Young  Irelanders  as  a  body 
it  would,  as  the  events  showed,  have  been  enthusiastically  adopted 
by  the  people  at  large,  in  which  event  no  force  in  the  power  of 
England  could  have  saved  landlordism  or  the  British  Empire  in 
Ireland.  As  explained  by  Fintan  Lalor,  the  keenest  intellect  in 
Ireland  in  his  day,  it  meant  the  avoidance  of  all  pitched  battles 
with  the  English  army,  and  drawing  it  into  a  struggle  along  lines 
and  on  a  plan  of  campaign  where  its  discipline,  training,  and 
methods  would  be  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help,  and  where  no 
mobilisation,  battalion  drilling  nor  technical  knowledge  of  mili- 
tary science  was  required  of  the  insurgent  masses.  In  short,  it 
involved  a  social  and  a  national  revolution,  each  resting  upon  the 
other.  But  the  men  who  advocated  this  were  in  a  hopeless  mi- 
nority, and  the  chiefs  of  the  Young  Irelanders  were  as  rabidly 
solicitous  about  the  rights  of  the  landlord  as  were  the  chiefs  of 
the  English  Government.  While  the  people  perished  the  Young 
Irelanders  talked,  and  their  talk  was  very  beautiful,  thoroughly 
grammatical,  nicely  polished,  and  the  proper  amount  of  passion 
introduced  always  at  the  proper  psychological  moment.  But  still 
the  people  perished.  Eventually  the  Government  seized  upon  the 
really  dangerous  man — the  man  who  had  hatred  of  injustice 
deeply  enough  rooted  to  wish  to  destroy  it  at  all  costs,  the  man 
who  had  faith  enough  in  the  masses  to  trust  a  revolutionary  out- 
break to  their  native  impulses,  and  who  possessed  the  faculty  of 
combining  thought  with  action,  John  Mitchel.  With  his  arrest 
the  people  looked  for  immediate  revolution,  so  did  the  Govern- 
ment, so  did  Mitchel  himself.  All  were  disappointed.  John 
Mitchel  was  carried  off  to  penal  servitude  in  Van  Diemeiv's 
Land  (Tasmania)  after  scorn  fully  refusing  to  sign  a  manifesto 
presented  to  him  in  his  ceil  by  Thomas  Francis  Meagher  and 
others,  counselling  the  people  not  to  attempt  to  rescue  him. 
The  working  class  of  Dublin  and  most  of  the  towns  were  clam- 
ouring for  their  leaders  to  give  the  word  for  a  rising;  in  many 
places  in  the  country  the  peasantry  were  acting  spontaneously. 
Eventually  news  reaching  Dublin  in  July,  1848,  that  warrants 
were  issued  for  the  arrest  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Young  Ireland 
party  they  determined  to  appeal  to  the  country.  But  everything 
had  to  be  done  in  a  "respectable"  manner ;  English  army  on  one 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  109 

side,  provided  with  guns,  bands  and  banners ;  Irish  army  on  the 
other  side,  also  provided  with  guns,  bands  and  banners,  "serried 
ranks  with  glittering  steel,"  no  more  proletarian  insurrection, 
and  no  interference  with  the  rights  of  property.  When  C.  G. 
Duffy  was  arrested  on  Saturday,  9th  of  July,  in  Dublin,  the 
Dublin  workers  surrounded  the  military  escort  on  the  way  to 
the  prison  at  Newgate,  stopped  the  carriage,  pressed  up  to 
Duffy  and  offered  to  begin  the  insurrection  then  and  there.  "Do 
you  wish  to  be  rescued?"  said  one  of  the  leaders.  "Certainly 
not,"  said  Duffy.  And  the  puzzled  toilers  fell  back  and  allowed 
the  future  Australian  Premier  to  go  to  prison.  In  Cashel,  Tip- 
perary,  Michael  Doheny  was  arrested.  The  people  stormed  the 
jail  and  rescued  him.  He  insisted  upon  giving  himself  up  again 
and  applied  for  bail.  In  Waterford  Meagher  was  arrested.  As 
he  was  being  taken  through  the  city  guarded  by  troops  the  people 
erected  a  barricade  in  the  way  across  a  narrow  bridge  over  the 
River  Suir,  and  when  the  carriage  reached  the  bridge  some  one 
cut  the  traces  of  the  horses  and  brought  the  cavalcade  to  a  stand- 
still. Meagher  ordered  them  to  remove  the  barricade;  they 
begged  him  to  give  the  word  for  insurrection  and  they  would 
begin  then  and  there.  The  important  city  was  in  their  hands, 
but  Meagher  persisted  in  going  with  the  soldiers,  and  the  poor 
working  class  rebels  of  Waterford  let  him  go,  crying  out  as 
they  did  so,  "You  will  regret  it,  you  will  regret  it,  and  it  is  your 
own  fault."  Meagher  afterwards  proved  himself  a  fearless 
soldier  of  a  regular  army,  but  as  an  insurgent  he  lacked  the 
necessary  initiative. 

But  the  crowning  absurdity  of  all  was  the  leadership  of 
William  Smith  O'Brien.  He  wandered  through  the  country 
telling  the  starving  peasantry  to  get  ready,  but  refusing  to  allow 
them  to  feed  themselves  at  the  expense  of  the  landlords  who  had 
so  long  plundered,  starved,  and  evicted  them ;  he  would  not  allow 
his  followers  to  seize  upon  the  carts  of  grain  passing  along  the 
roads  where  the  people  were  dying  for  want  of  food ;  at  Mulli- 
nahone  he  refused  to  allow  his  followers  to  fell  trees  to  build  a 
barricade  across  the  road  until  they  had  asked  permission  of  the 
landlords  who  owned  the  trees;  when  the  people  of  Killenaule 
had  a  body  of  dragoons  entrapped  between  two  barricades  he 
released  the  dragoons  from  their  dangerous  situation  upon  their 
leader  assuring  him  that  he  had  no  warrant  for  his,  O'Brien's 
arrest;  in  another  place  he  surprised  a  party  of  soldiers  in  the 
Town  Hall  with  their  arms  taken  apart  for  cleaning  purposes, 
and  instead  of  confiscating  the  arms  he  told  the  soldiers  that 


110  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

their  arms  were  as  safe  there  as  they  would  be  in  Dublin  Castle. 

When  we  remember  the  state  of  Ireland  then,  with  her  pop- 
ulation perishing  of  famine,  all  the  above  recital  reads  like  a 
page  of  comic  opera.  Unfortunately  it  is  not;  it  is  a  page  from 
the  blackest  period  of  Ireland's  history.  Reading  it  we  can 
understand  why  Smith  O'Brien  has  a  monument  in  Dublin,  al- 
though Fintan  Lalor's  name  and  writings  were  boycotted  for 
more  than  fifty  years.  W.  A.  O'Connor,  B.A.,  in  his  "History 
of  the  Irish  People,"  sums  up  Smith  O'Brien's  career  thus: — 
"The  man  had  broken  up  a  peaceful  organisation  in  the  cause  of 
war,  promised  war  to  a  people  in  desperate  strait,  went  into  the 
country  to  wage  war,  then  considered  it  guilt  to  do  any  act  of 
war."  It  must,  of  course,  be  conceded  that  Smith  O'Brien  was 
a  man  of  high  moral  probity,  but  it  is  equally  necessary  to  affirm 
that  he  was  a  landlord  vehemently  solicitous  for  the  rights  of  his 
class,  and  allowing  his  solicitude  for  those  rights  to  stand  be- 
tween the  millions  of  the  Irish  race  and  their  hopes  of  life  and 
freedom.  It  ought,  however,  also  to  be  remembered,  in  exten- 
uation of  his  conduct  in  that  awful  crisis,  that  he  had  inherited 
vast  estates  as  the  result  of  the  social,  national,  and  religious 
apostacy  of  his  forefathers,  and  in  view  of  such  an  ancestry 
it  is  more  wonderful  that  he  had  dreamed  of  rebellion  than  that 
he  had  repudiated  revolution. 

Had  Socialist  principles  been  applied  to  Ireland  in  those 
days  not  one  person  need  have  died  of  hunger,  and  not  one  cent 
of  charity  need  have  been  subscribed  to  leave  a  smirch  upon  the 
Irish  name.  But  all  except  a  few  men  had  elevated  landlord 
property  and  capitalist  political  economy  to  a  fetish  to  be  wor- 
shipped, and  upon  the  altar  of  that  fetish  Ireland  perished.  At 
the  lowest  computation  1,225,000  persons  died  of  absolute  hun- 
ger; all  of  these  were  sacrificed  upon  the  altar  of  capitalist 
thought. 

Early  in  the  course  of  the  famine  the  English  Premier, 
Lord  John  Russell,  declared  that  nothing  must  be  done  to  inter- 
fere with  private  enterprise  or  the  regular  course  of  trade,  and 
this  was  the  settled  policy  of  the  Government  from  first  to  last. 
A  Treasury  "Minute"  of  August  31,  1846,  provided  that"  depots 
for  the  sale  of  food  were  to  be  established  at  Longford,  Banagher, 
Limerick,  Galway,  Waterford,  and  Sligo,  and  subordinate  depots 
at  other  places  on  the  western  coast,"  but  the  rules  provided 
that  such  depots  were  not  to  be  opened  where  food  could  be  ob- 
tained from  private  dealers,  and  when  opened  food  was  to  be 
sold  at  prices  which  would  permit  of  private  dealers  competing. 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  111 

In  all  the  Acts  establishing  relief  works  it  was  stipulated  that  all 
the  labour  must  be  entirely  unproductive,  so  as  not  to  prevent 
capitalists  making  a  profit  either  then  or  in  the  future.  Private 
dealers  made  fortunes  ranging  from  £40,000  to  £80,000.  In  1845 
a  Commissariat  Relief  Department  was  organised  to  bring  in 
Indian  Corn  for  sale  in  Ireland,  but  none  was  to  be  sold  until  all 
private  stores  were  sold  out:  the  State  of  Massachusetts  hired  an 
American  ship-of-war,  the  Jamestown,  loaded  it  with  grain,  and 
sent  it  to  Ireland;  the  Government  placed  the  cargo  in  storage, 
claiming  that  putting  it  on  the  market  would  disturb  trade.  A 
Poor  Relief  Bill  in  1847  made  provision  for  the  employment  of 
labour  on  public  works,  but  stipulated  that  none  should  be  em- 
ployed who  retained  more  than  a  quarter  of  an  acre  of  land; 
this  induced  tens  of  thousands  to  surrender  their  farms  for  the 
sake  of  a  bite  to  eat  and  saved  the  landlords  all  the  trouble  and 
expense  of  eviction.  When  this  had  been  accomplished  to  a 
sufficient  extent  734,000  persons  were  discharged,  and  as  they 
had  given  up  their  farms  to  get  employment  on  the  works  they 
were  now  as  helpless  as  men  on  a  raft  in  mid  ocean.  Mr.  Mul- 
hall,  in  his  "Fifty  Years  of  National  Progress,"  estimates  the 
number  of  persons  evicted  between  1838  and  1888  as  3,668,000 ; 
the  greater  number  of  these  saw  their  homes  destroyed  during 
the  years  under  consideration,  and  this  Poor  Relief  Bill,  nick- 
named an  "Eviction-Made-Easy  Act,"  was  one  main  weapon 
for  their  undoing.  In  1846,  England,  hitherto  a  Protectionist 
country,  adopted  Free  Trade,  ostensibly  in  order  to  permit  corn 
to  come  freely  and  cheaply  to  the  starving  Irish.  In  reality,  as 
Ireland  was  a  corn  and  grain  exporting  country,  the  measure 
brought  Continental  agricultural  produce  to  England  into  compe- 
tition with  that  of  Ireland,  and  hence  by  lowering  agricultural 
prices  still  further  intensified  the  misery  of  the  Irish  producing 
classes.  The  real  meaning  of  the  measure  was  that  England, 
being  a  manufacturing  nation,  desired  to  cheapen  food  in  order 
that  its  wageslaves  might  remain  content  with  low  wages,  and 
indeed  one  of  the  most  immediate  results  of  free  trade  in  Eng- 
land was  a  wholesale  reduction  of  the  wages  of  the  manufactur- 
ing proletariat. 

The  English  capitalist  class,  with  that  hypocrisy  that  every- 
where characterises  the  class  in  its  public  acts,  used  the  misery  of 
the  Irish  as  a  means  to  conquer  the  opposition  of  the  English 
landlord  class  to  free  trade  in  grains,  but  in  this,  as  in  every  other 
measure  of  the  famine  years,  they  acted  consistently  upon  the 
lines  of  capitalist  political  economy.  Within  the  limits  of  that 


112  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

social  system  and  its  theories  their  acts  are  unassailable  and  un- 
impeachable; it  is  only  when  we  reject  that  system  and  the  in- 
tellectual and  social  fetters  it  imposes  that  we  really  acquire  the 
right  to  denounce  the  English  administration  of  Irsland  during 
the  famine  as  a  colossal  crime  against  the  human  race.  The 
non-socialist  Irish  man  or  woman  who  fumes  against  that  admin- 
istration is  in  the  illogical  position  of  denouncing  an  effect  of 
whose  cause  he  is  a  supporter.  That  cause  was  the  system  of 
capitalist  property.  With  the  exception  of  those  few  men  we 
have  before  named,  the  Young  Ireland  leaders  of  1848  failed  to 
rise  to  the  grandeur  of  the  opportunity  offered  them  to  choose 
between  human  rights  and  property  rights  as  a  basis  of  nationality, 
and  the  measure  of  their  failure  was  the  measure  of  their  coun- 
try's disaster. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

SOCIALISTIC  TEACHING  OF  YOUNG  IRELANDERS;  THE  THINKERS 
AND  THE  WORKERS. 

"What  do  ye  at  our  door, 
Ye  guard  our  master's  granaries  from  the  thin  hands  of  the  poor." 

— Lady  Wilde  (Speransa). 
"God  of  Justice,  I  cried,  send  Thy  spirit  down 

On  those  lords  so  cruel  and  proud. 
Soften  their  hearts  and  relax  their  frown, 

Or  else,  I  cried  aloud, 
Vouchsafe  strength  to  the  peasant's  hand 

To  drive  them  at  length  from  out  the  land." 
— Thomas  Davis. 

WE  have  pointed  out  that  the  Young  Ireland  chiefs  who  had 
so  fervently  declaimed  about  the  revolution  were  utterly  inca- 
pable of  accepting  it  when  at  last  it  presented  itself  to  them,  in- 
deed Doheny  uses  that  very  word  in  describing  the  scenes  at 
Cashel.  "It  was  the  revolution,"  he  said,  "if  we  had  accepted  it." 
We  might  with  perfect  justice  apply  to  these  brilliant  but  unfortu- 
nate men  the  words  of  another  writer,  Lissagaray,  in  describing 
a  similar  class  of  leaders  in  France,  and  say  "having  all  their 
life  sung  the  glories  of  the  Revolution,  when  it  rose  up  before 
them  they  ran  away  appalled,  like  the  Arab  fisher  at  the  appari- 
tion of  the  genie."  To  the  average  historian  who  treats  of  the 
relations  between  Ireland  and  England  as  of  a  struggle  between 
two  nations,  without  any  understanding  of  the  economic  con- 
ditions, or  of  the  great  world  movements  which  caught  both 
countries  in  their  grasp,  the  hesitancy  and  vacillation  of  the 
Young  Ireland  chiefs  in  the  crisis  of  their  country's  fate  consti- 
tutes an  insoluble  problem  and  has  too  often  been  used  to  point 
a  sneer  at  Irishmen  when  the  writer  was  English,  or  to  justify 
a  sickening  apology  when  the  writer  was  Irish.  Neither  action 
is  at  all  warranted.  The  simple  fact  is  that  the  Irish  workers 
in  town  and  country  were  ready  and  willing  to  revolt,  and  that 

113 


114  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

the  English  Government  of  the  time  was  saved  from  serious 
danger  only  by  the  fact  that  Smith  O'Brien  and  those  who  pat- 
terned after  him,  dreaded  to  trust  the  nation  to  the  passion  of 
the  so-called  lower  classes.  Had  rebellion  broken  out  at  the  time 
in  Ireland  the  English  Chartists  who  had  been  arming  and  pre- 
paring for  a  similar  purpose  would,  as  indeed  Mitchel  pointed  out 
continually  in  his  paper,  have  seized  the  occasion  to  take  the 
field  also.  Many  regiments  of  the  English  army  were  also 
honey-combed  with  revolt,  and  had  repeatedly  shown  their  spirit 
by  publicly  cheering  for  the  Irish  and  Chartist  cause.  An 
English  leader  of  the  Chartists,  John  Frost,  was  sentenced  to  a 
heavy  term  of  transportation  for  his  seditious  utterances  at  this 
time,  and  another  great  English  companion  of  the  working  class, 
Ernest  Jones,  in  commenting  upon  the  case,  declared  defiantly 
in  a  public  meeting  that  "the  time  would  come  when  John  Mitchel 
and  John  Frost  would  be  brought  back,  and  Lord  John  Russell 
sent  to  take  their  place,  and  the  Green  Flag  would  fly  in  tri- 
umph over  Downing  Street  and  Dublin  Castle,"  Downing  Street 
being  the  residence  of  the  Prime  Minister.  For  uttering  this 
sentiment,  Ernest  Jones  was  arrested  and  sentenced  to  twelve 
months'  imprisonment. 

In  their  attitude  towards  all  manifestation  of  working  class 
revolt  in  England  the  Young  Irelanders  were  sorely  divided.  In 
his  paper  "The  United  Irishman"  John  Mitchel  hailed  it  exult- 
antly as  an  aid  to  Ireland,  and  as  a  presage  of  the  victory  of  real 
democracy,  setting  aside  a  large  portion  of  his  space  in  every 
issue  to  chronicle  the  progress  of  the  cause  of  the  people  in 
England.  His  attitude  in  this  matter  was  one  of  the  most  potent 
causes  of  his  enduring  popularity  amongst  the  masses.  On  the 
other  hand  the  section  of  Young  Irelanders  who  had  made  Smith 
O'Brien  their  idol  for  no  other  discoverable  reason  than  the  fact 
that  he  was  rich  and  most  respectable,  strove  by  every  means 
in  their  power  to  dissociate  the  cause  of  Ireland  from  the  cause 
of  democracy.  A  wordy  war  between  Mitchel  and  his  critics 
ensued,  each  side  appealing  to  the  precedent  of  1798,  with  the 
result  that  Mitchel  was  easily  able  to  prove  that  the  revolution- 
ists of  that  period — notably  Wolfe  Tone — had  not  only  allied  the 
cause  of  Ireland  with  the  cause  of  democracy  in  general,  but  had 
vehemently  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  a  social  revolution 
in  Ireland  at  the  expense  of  the  landed  aristocracy.  Copying 
from  Fintan  Lalor,  Mitchel  made  the  principles  involved  in  those 
ideas  the  slogans  of  his  revolutionary  campaign.  He  correctly 
insisted  upon  a  social  insurrection  as  the  only  possible  basis 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  115 

for  a  national  revolution,  that  the  same  insurrectionary  upheaval 
that  destroyed  and  ended  the  social  subjection  of  the  producing 
classes  would  end  the  hateful  foreign  tyranny  reared  upon  it. 
Two  passages  from  his  writings  are  especially  useful  as  bearing 
out  and  attesting  to  his  position  on  those  points — points  that  are 
still  the  fiercest  subjects  of  dispute  in  Ireland.  In  his  "Letter  to 
the  small  farmers  of  Ireland,"  March  4,  1848,  he  says,  "But  I  am 
told  it  is  vain  to  speak  thus  to  you;  that  the  peace  policy  of 
O'Connell  is  dearer  to  you  than  life  and  honour — that  many  of 
your  clergy,  too,  exhort  you  to  die  rather  than  violate  what  the 
English  call  'law' — and  that  you  are  resolved  to  take  their  bid- 
ding. Then  die — die  in  your  patience  and  perseverance,  but  be 
well  assured  of  this — that  the  priest  who  bids  you  perish  pa- 
tiently amidst  your  own  golden  harvest  preaches  the  gospel  of 
England,  insults  manhood  and  common  sense,  bears  false  wit- 
ness against  religion,  and  blasphemes  the  Providence  of  God." 

When  the  Republican  Government,  which  came  into  power 
in  Paris  after  the  revolution  February,  1848,  recognizing  that 
it  owed  its  existence  to  the  armed  working  men,  and  that  those 
workers  were  demanding  some  security  for  their  own  class  as 
a  recompense  for  their  bloody  toil,  enacted  a  law  guaranteeing 
"the  right  to  work"  to  all,  and  pledging  the  credit  of  the  nation 
to  secure  that  right,  Mitchel  joyfully  hailed  that  law  as  an  indi- 
cation that  the  absurd  theories  of  what  he  rightfully  styled  the 
"English  system,"  or  capitalism,  had  no  longer  a  hold  upon  the 
minds  of  the  French  people.  We  quote  a  portion  of  that  article. 
Our  readers  will  note  that  the  Free  Trade  referred  to  is  Free 
Trade  in  Labour  as  against  State  Protection  of  the  rights  of  the 
workers : 

"Dynasties  and  thrones  are  not  half  as  important  as  work- 
shops, farms,  and  factories.  Rather  we  may  say  that  dynasties 
and  thrones,  and  even  provisional  governments,  are  good  for 
anything  exactly  in  proportion  as  they  secure  fair  play,  justice, 
and  freedom  to  those  who  labour. 

"It  is  here  that  France  is  really  ahead  of  all  the  world.  The 
great  Third  Revolution  has  overthrown  the  enlightened  pedantic 
political  economy  (what  we  know  in  Ireland  as  the  English 
political  economy,  or  the  Famine  Political  Economy),  and  has 
established  once  and  for  all  the  true  and  old  principles  of  pro- 
tection to  labour,  and  the  right  and  duty  of  combination  among 
workmen. 

"By  a  decree  of  the  Provisional  Government  dated  Feb-> 
ruary  25th : — 


116  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

"It  engages  to  guarantee  work  to  all  citizens.  It  recognises 
the  right  of  workmen  to  combine  for  the  purpose  of  enjoying  the 
lawful  proceeds  of  their  labour." 

"The  French  Republicans  do  not,  like  ignorant  and  bar- 
barous English  Whigs,  recognise  a  right  to  pauper  relief  and 
make  it  a  premium  upon  idleness.  They  know  that  man  has  a 
charter  to  eat  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow  and  not  otherwise, 
and  they  acknowledge  that  highest  and  most  sacred  mission  of 
government — to  take  care  that  bread  may  be  had  for  the  earning. 
For  this  reason  they  expressly,  and  in  set  terms,  renounce 
"competition"  and  "free  trade"  in  the  sense  in  which  an  English 
Whig  uses  these  ivords,  and  deliberately  adopt  combination  and 
protection — that  the  nation  should  combine  to  protect  by  laws 
its  own  national  industry,  and  that  individuals  should  combine 
with  other  individuals  to  protect  by  trades  associations  the 
several  branches  of  national  industry. 

"The  free  trade  and  competition — in  other  words  the  Eng- 
lish system — is  pretty  well  understood  now;  its  obvious  purpose 
and  effect  are  to  make  the  rich  richer  and  the  poor  poorer,  to 
make  capital  the  absolute  ruler  of  the  world,  and  labour  a  blind 
and  helpless  slave.  By  free  trade  the  manufacturers  of  Man- 
chester are  enabled  to  clothe  India,  China,  and  South  America, 
and  the  artizans  of  Manchester  can  hardly  keep  themselves 
covered  from  the  cold.  By  dint  of  free  trade  Belfast  grows  more 
linen  cloth  than  it  ever  did  before ;  but  the  men  who  weave  it  have 
hardly  a  shirt  to  their  backs.  Free  trade  fills  with  corn  the 
stores  of  speculating  capitalists,  but  leaves  those  who  have  sown 
and  reaped  the  corn  without  a  meal.  Free  trade  unpeoples  vil- 
lages and  peoples  poorhouses,  consolidates  farms  and  gluts  the 
graveyards  with  famished  corpses. 

"There  is  to  be  no  more  of  this  free  trade  in  France.  Men 
can  no  longer  'do  what  they  like  with  their  own'  there. 

"February,  1848,  came,  and  the  pretext  of  the  reform  ban- 
quet. Again  Paris  had  her  three  days'  agony,  and  was  delivered 
of  her  third  and  fairest  born  revolution.  "There  could  be  no 
mistake  this  time ;  the  rubbish  of  thrones  and  dynasties  is  swept 
out  for  ever,  and  the  people  sit  sovereign  in  the  land.  One  of 
their  first  and  greatest  acts  is  the  enactment  of  a  commission  to 
inquire  into  the  whole  of  the  great  labour  question,  and  to  all 
the  documents  issued  by  this  commission  appear  signed  the 
names  of  Louis  Blanc  and  the  insurgent  of  Lyons,  Albert, 
Ouvrier  (workman).  He  is  not  ashamed  of  his  title,  though  now 
a  great  officer  of  the  State.  He  is  a  working  man,  and  is  proud 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  117 

of  it  'in  any  bond,  bill,  quittance,  or  obligation/  Ouvrier. 

''Sixty-six  years  ago  the  farmers  of  France  had  their  revo- 
lution. Eighteen  years  ago  the  'respectable'  middle  classes  had 
theirs,  and  have  made  a  good  penny  in  it  since,  but  upon  this 
third  and  last  all  the  world  may  see  the  stamp  and  impress 
of  the  man  who  made  it — Albert  Ouvrier,  his  mark.  We  have 
all  three  revolutions  to  accomplish,  and  the  sooner  we  set  about 
it  the  better.  Only  let  us  hope  all  the  work  may  be  done  in  one. 
Let  not  the  lessons  of  history  be  utterly  useless. 

"The  detestable  system  of  'free  trade'  and  'fair  competition' 
which  is  described  by  Louis  Blanc  as  'that  specious  system  of 
leaving  unrestricted  all  pecuniary  dealings  between  man  and  man, 
which  leaves  the  poor  man  at  the  mercy  of  the  rich,  and  promises 
to  cupidity  that  waits  its  time  an  easy  victory  over  hunger  that 
cannot  wait/  the  system  that  seeks  to  make  Mammon  and  not 
God  or  justice  rule  this  world — in  one  word,  the  English  or  fam- 
ine system — must  be  abolished  utterly,  in  farms  or  workshops, 
in  town  and  country,  abolished  utterly ;  and  to  do  this  were  worth 
three  revolutions,  or  three  times  three." 

So  wrote  Mitchel  when,  burning  with  a  holy  hatred  of 
tyranny,  he  poured  the  vitriol  of  his  scorn  upon  all  the  pedants 
who  strutted  around  him,  pedants  who  were  as  scrupulous  in 
polishing  a  phrase  for  a  lecture  as  a  sword  for  a  parade — and 
incapable  of  advancing  beyond  either. 

His  joy  was,  we  now  know,  somewhat  premature,  as  the 
government  which  passed  the  law  was  itself  a  capitalistic  gov- 
ernment, and  as  soon  as  it  found  itself  strong  enough,  and  had 
won  over  the  army,  repealed  its  own  law,  and  suppressed,  with  the 
most  frightful  bloodshed,  the  June  insurrection  of  the  workmen 
striving  to  enforce  its  fulfilment.  It  is  the  latter  insurrection 
which  Mitchel  denounces  in  his  Jail  Journal  when,  led  astray 
by  the  garbled  reports  of  English  newspapers,  he  anathematises 
the  very  men  whom  he  had  in  this  article,  when  fuller  sources  of 
information  were  available,  courageously  and  justly  praised . 
But  another  revolutionist,  Devin  Reilly,  in  the  "Irish  Felon/' 
more  correctly  appraised  the  position  of  the  June  insurgents,  and 
also  appreciated  the  fact  that  Ireland  for  its  redemption  required 
something  more  far-reaching,  something  sounding  deeper  springs 
of  human  action,  something  more  akin  to  the  teachings  that  in- 
spired the  heroic  workers  of  France  than  was  to  be  found  in 
the  "personal  probity,"  or  "high  principles,"  or  "aristocratic 
descent,"  or  "eminent  respectability"  of  a  few  leaders. 

When  Mitchel  was  arrested  and  his  paper  suppressed  two 


118  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

other  papers  sprang  up  to  take  the  post  of  danger  thus  left 
vacant.  One  "The  Irish  Tribune,"  represented  the  element 
which  stood  for  the  "moral  right  of  insurrection,"  and  the  other, 
the  "Irish  Felon,"  embodied  the  ideas  of  those  who  insisted  that 
the  English  conquest  of  Ireland  was  two-fold,  social,  or  eco- 
nomic, and  political,  and  that  therefore  the  revolution  must  also 
have  these  two  aspects.  These  latter  were  at  all  times  in  the 
fullest  sympathy  with  the  movements  of  the  working  class  de- 
mocracy at  home  and  abroad.  John  Martin  edited  the  "Irish 
Felon,"  James  Fintan  Lalor  and  Devin  Reilly  were  its  chief 
writers.  Reilly,  who  hailed  originally  from  Monaghan,  had 
long  been  a  close  observer  of  and  sympathiser  with  the  move- 
ments of  the  working  class,  and  all  schemes  of  social  redemption. 
As  a  writer  on  the  "Nation"  newspaper  he  had  contributed  a 
series  of  articles  on  the  great  French  Socialist,  Louis  Blanc,  in  a 
review  of  his  great  work  "Dix  Ans"  (Ten  Years),  in  which, 
while  dissenting  from  the  "State  Socialistic"  schemes  of  social 
regeneration  favoured  by  Blanc  he  yet  showed  the  keenest 
appreciation  of  the  gravity  and  universality  of  the  social  ques- 
tion, as  well  as  grasping  the  innate  heroism  and  sublimity  of  the 
working  class  movement.  This  attitude  he  preserved  to  the  last 
of  his  days.  When  in  exile  in  America,  after  the  insurrection, 
he  was  chosen  by  the  printers  of  Boston  to  edit  a  paper,  the  "Pro- 
tective Union,"  they  had  founded  on  co-operative  principles  to 
advocate  the  rights  of  labour,  and  was  thus  one  of  the  first 
pioneers  of  labour  journalism  in  the  United  States — a  proud  and 
fitting  position  for  a  true  Irish  revolutionist.  As  writer  in  the 
"American  Review"  he  wrote  a  series  of  articles  on  the  European 
situation,  of  which  Horace  Greeley  said  that  if  collected  and 
published  as  a  book  they  would  create  a  revolution  in  Europe. 
Commenting  upon  the  uprising  in  France  in  June  he  says  in  the 
"Irish  Felon": 

"We  are  not  Communists — we  abhor  communism  for  the 
same  reason  we  abhor  poor  law  systems,  and  systems  founded  on 
the  absolute  sovereignty  of  wealth.  Communism  destroys  the 
independence  and  dignity  of  labour,  makes  the  workingman  a 
State  pauper  and  takes  his  manhood  from  him.  But,  communism 
or  no  communism,  these  70,000  workmen  had  a  clear  right  to  ex- 
istence— they  had  the  best  right  to  existence  of  any  men  in 
France,  and  if  they  could  have  asserted  their  right  by  force  of 
arms  they  would  have  been  fully  justified.  The  social  system 
in  which  a  man  willing  to  work  is  compelled  to  starve  is  a  blas- 
phemy, an  anarchy,  and  no  system.  For  the  present  these  vie- 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  119 

tims  of  monarchic  rule,  disowned  by  the  republic,  are  conquered ; 
10,000  are  slain,  20,000  perhaps  doomed  to  the  Marquesas. 
But  for  all  that  the  rights  of  labour  are  not  conquered,  and  will 
not  and  cannot  be  conquered.  Again  and  again  the  labourer  will 
rise  up  against  the  idler — the  ivorkingmcn  will  meet  this  bour- 
geoisie, and  grapple  and  war  with  them  till  their  equality  is  es- 
tablished, not  in  word,  but  in  fact." 

This  was  the  spirit  of  the  men  grouped  around  the  "Irish 
Felon,"  its  editor  alone  excepted.  Students  of  Socialism  will 
recognize  that  many  who  are  earnest  workers  for  Socialism 
to-day  would,  like  Devin  Reilly,  have  "abhorred"  the  crude 
Communism  of  1848.  The  fact  that  he  insisted  upon  the  un- 
qualified right  of  the  working  class  to  work  out  its  own  salvation, 
by  force  of  arms  if  necessary,  is  what  entitles  Devin  Reilly  to  a 
high  place  of  honour  in  the  estimation  of  the  militant  proletariat 
of  Ireland.  The  opening  passage  in  an  "Address  of  the  Medical 
Students  of  Dublin  to  All  Irish  Students  of  Science  and  Art," 
adopted  at  a  meeting  held  in  Northumberland  Buildings,  Eden 
Quay,  on  April  4,  1848,  and  signed  by  John  Savage  as  Chairman 
and  Richard  Dalton  Williams  as  Secretary,  shows  also  that 
amongst  the  educated  young  men  of  that  generation  there  was  a 
general  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  struggle  of  Ireland  against 
her  oppressors  was  naturally  linked  with  and  ought  to  be  taken 
in  conjunction  with  the  world-wide  movement  of  the  democracy. 
It  says  "a  war  is  waging  at  this  hour  all  over  Europe  between 
Intelligence  and  Labour  on  the  one  side  and  Despotism  and  Force 
on  the  other,"  a  sentiment  which  Joseph  Brennan  versified  in  a 
poem  on  "Divine  Right,"  in  which  the  excellence  of  the  senti- 
ment must  be  held  to  atone  for  the  poverty  of  the  poetry.  One 
verse  says: — 

"The  only  right  acknowledged 
By  the  people  living  now. 
Is  the  right  to  obtain  honour, 

By  the  sweat  of  brain  and  brow.  : 

The  Right  Divine  of  Labour 
To  be  first  of  earthly  things, 
That  the  Thinker  and  the  Worker 
Are  manhood's  only  kings. 

But  the  palm  of  honour  for  the  clearest  exposition  of  the 
doctrine  of  revolution,  social  and  political,  must  be  given  to 
James  Fintan  Lalor,  of  Tenakill,  Queen's  County.  Lalor,  un- 
fortunately, suffered  from  a  slight  physical  disability,  which  in- 


120  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

capacitated  him  from  attaining  to  any  leadership  other  than  in- 
tellectual, a  fact  that  in  such  a  time  and  amidst  such  a  people 
was  fatal  to  his  immediate  influence.  Yet  in  his  writings,  as  we 
study  them  to-day,  we  find  principles  of  action  and  of  society 
which  have  within  them  not  only  the  best  plan  of  campaign 
suited  for  the  needs  of  a  country  seeking  its  freedom  through 
insurrection  against  a  dominant  nation,  but  also  held  the  seeds  of 
the  more  perfect  social  peace  of  the  future.  All  his  writings  at 
this  period  are  so  illuminating  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  select 
from  the  mass  any  particular  passages  which  more  deserve  re- 
production than  others.  But  as  an  indication  of  the  line  of 
argument  pursued  by  this  peerless  thinker  and  as  a  welcome 
contrast  to  the  paralysing  respect,  nay,  reverence,  for  landlord- 
ism shown  by  Smith  O'Brien  and  his  worshippers,  perhaps  the 
following  passages  will  serve.  In  an  articles  entitled  "The  Faith 
of  a  Felon,"  published  July  8,  1848,  he  tells  how  he  had  striven 
to  convert  the  Irish  Confederation  to  his  views  and  failed,  and 
says:  "They  wanted  an  alliance  with  the  landowners.  They 
chose  to  consider  them  as  Irishmen,  and  imagined  they  could 
induce  them  to  hoist  the  green  flag.  They  wished  to  preserve 
an  aristocracy.  They  desired,  not  a  democratic,  but  merely  a 
national,  revolution.  Had  the  Confederation  in  the  May  or  June 
of  '47  thrown  heart  and  mind  and  means  into  the  movement  I 
pointed  out  they  would  have  made  it  successful,  and  settled  at 
once  and  forever  all  questions  between  us  and  England.  The 
opinions  I  then  stated,  and  which  I  yet  stand  firm  to,  are  these : — 

"1.  That  in  order  to  save  their  own  lives,  the  occupying 
tenants  of  the  soil  of  Ireland  ought,  next  autumn,  to  refuse  all 
rent  and  arrears  of  rent  then  due,  beyond  and  except  the  value 
of  the  overplus  of  harvest  produce  remaining  in  their  hands  after 
having  deducted  and  reserved  a  due  and  full  provision  for  their 
own  subsistence  during  the  next  ensuing  twelve  months. 

"2.  That  they  ought  to  refuse  and  resist  being  made  beggars, 
landless  and  homeless,  under  the  English  law  of  ejection. 

"3.  That  they  ought  further,  on  principle,  to  refuse  all  rent 
to  the  present  usurping  proprietors,  until  the  people,  the  true 
proprietors  (or  lords  paramount,  in  legal  parlance)  have,  in  na- 
tional congress  or  convention,  decided  what  rents  they  are  to  pay, 
and  to  whom  they  are  to  pay  them. 

"4.  And  that  the  people,  on  grounds  of  policy  and  economy, 
ought  to  decide  (as  a  general  rule  admitting  of  reservations)  that 
these  rents  shall  be  paid  to  themselves,  the  people,  for  public 
purposes,  and  for  behoof  and  benefit  of  them,  the  entire  general 


LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY  121 

people.'' 

"It  has  been  said  to  me  that  such  a  war,  on  the  principles  I 
propose,  would  be  looked  on  with  detestation  by  Europe.  I  assert 
the  contrary;  I  say  such  a  war  would  propagate  itself  through- 
out Europe.  Mark  the  words  of  this  prophecy — the  principle  I 
propound  goes  to  the  foundations  of  Europe,  and  sooner  or  later 
will  cause  Europe  to  outrise.  Mankind  will  yet  be  masters  of  the 
earth.  The  right  of  the  people  to  make  the  laws — this  produced 
the  first  great  modern  earthquake,  whose  latent  shocks,  even  now, 
are  heaving  in  the  heart  of  the  world.  The  right  of  the  people  to 
own  the  land — this  will  produce  the  next.  Train  your  hands,  and 
your  sons'  hands,  gentlemen  of  the  earth,  for  you  and  they  will 
yet  have  to  use  them." 

The  paragraph  is  significant  as  demonstrating  that  Fintan 
Lalor,  like  all  the  really  dangerous  revolutionists  of  Ireland, 
advocated  his  principles  as  part  of  the  creed  of  the  democracy 
of  the  world,  and  not  merely  as  applicable  only  to  the  incidents 
of  the  struggle  of  Ireland  against  England.  But  this  latter  is  the 
interpretation  which  the  middle  class  politicians  and  historians 
of  Ireland  have  endeavoured  to  give  his  teachings  after  the  fail- 
ure of  their  attempt,  continued  for  half  a  century,  to  ignore  or 
suppress  all  reference  to  his  contribution  to  Irish  revolutionary 
literature.  The  working  class  democracy  of  Ireland  will,  it  is 
to  be  hoped,  be,  for  their  part,  as  assertive  of  the  universality  of 
Lalor's  sympathies  as  their  bourgeois  compatriots  are  in  denying 
it.  That  working  class  would  be  uselessly  acquiescing  in  the 
smirching  of  its  own  record  were  it  to  permit  emasculation  of 
the  message  of  this  Irish  apostle  of  revolutionary  Socialism.  And 
in  emphasising  the  catholicity  of  his  sympathies  as  well  as  the 
keenness  of  his  insight  into  the  social  structure,  that  Irish  work- 
ing class  will  do  well  to  confront  the  apostate  patriotism  of  the 
politicians  and  anti-Socialists  of  Ireland  with  the  following  bril- 
liant passage  from  the  work  already  quoted,  and  thus  show  how 
Lalor  answered  the  plea  of  those  who  begged  him  to  moderate 
or  modify  his  position,  to  preach  it  as  a  necessity  of  Ireland's 
then  desperate  condition,  and  not  as  a  universal  principle. 

"I  attest  and  urge  the  plea  of  utter  and  desperate  necessity 
to  fortify  her  (Ireland's)  claim,  but  not  to  found  it.  /  rest  it  on 
no  temporary  and  passing  conditions,  but  on  principles  that  art 
permanent,  and  imperishable,  and  universal — available  to  all  times 
and  to  all  countries  as  well  as  to  our  own — I  pierce  through  the 
upper  stratum  of  occasional  and  shifting  circumstances  to  bot- 
tom and  base  on  the  rock  below.  I  put  the  question  in  its  eternal 


122  LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY 

form — the  form  in  which,  how  often  so  ever  suppressed  for  a 
season  it  can  never  be  finally  subdued,  but  will  remain  and  re- 
turn, outliving  and  outlasting  the  cowardice  and  corruption  of 
generations.  I  view  it  as  ages  will  view  it — not  through  the  mists 
of  a  famine,  but  by  the  living  lights  of  the  firmament." 

By  such  lights  the  teaching  of  Fintan  Lalor  are  being  viewed 
to-day,  with  the  result  that,  as  he  recedes  from  us  in  time  his 
grandeur  as  a  thinker  is  more  and  more  recognised;  his  form 
rises  clearer  and  more  distinct  to  our  view  as  the  forms  of  the 
petty  agitators  and  phrase-mongering  rebels  who  seemed  to 
dominate  the  scene  at  that  historic  period  sink  into  their  proper 
place  as  unconscious  factors  in  the  British  Imperial  plan  of  con- 
quest by  famine.  Cursed  by  the  fatal  gift  of  eloquence  our  Irish 
Girondins  of  the  Confederation  enthralled  the  Irish  people  and 
intoxicated  themselves  out  of  the  possibility  of  serious  thinking; 
drunken  with  words  they  failed  to  realise  that  the  ideas  originat- 
ing with  Fintan  Lalor  and  in  part  adopted  and  expounded  with 
such  dramatic  power  by  Mitchel,  were  a  more  serious  menace 
to  the  hated  power  of  England  than  any  the  dream  of  a  union 
of  classes  could  ever  materialise  on  Irish  soil;  the  bones  of  the 
famine  victims  whitening  on  every  Irish  hill  and  valley,  or  toss- 
ing on  every  wave  of  the  Atlantic  was  the  price  Ireland  paid 
for  the  eloquence  of  its  rebels,  and  their  scornful  rejection  of  the 
Socialistic  teachings  of  its  thinkers. 


CHAPTER  XV. 
SOME  MORE  IRISH  PIONEERS  OF  THE  SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT 

"Either  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  can  rule  this  world  or  it  cannot. 
The  Devil  has  a  right  to  rule  if  we  let  him,  but  he  has  no  right  to  call 
his  rule  Christian  Civilisation." — John  Boyle  O'Reilly. 

LOOKING  backward  to  that  eventful  period  (after  '48)  we  can 
now  see  that  all  hopes  of  a  revolutionary  movement  had  perished 
for  that  generation,  had  been  strangled  in  the  love  embraces  of 
our  Girondins ;  but  that  fact  naturally  was  not  so  apparent  to  the 
men  of  the  time.  Hence  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  jour- 
nalistic activity  on  the  part  of  the  revolutionists  did  not  cease  with 
the  suppression  of  the  "United  Irishman,"  the  "Irish  Tribune," 
or  the  "Irish  Felon."  A  small  fugitive  publication  entitled  the 
"Irish  National  Guard,"  published  apparently  by  a  body  of  cour- 
ageous Dublin  workingmen  of  advanced  opinions,  also  led  a 
chequered  existence  championing  the  cause  of  revolution,  and  in 
January,  1849,  another  paper,  "The  Irishman,"  was  set  on  foot 
by  Bernard  Fullam,  who  had  been  business  manager  of  the  "Na- 
tion." Fullam  also  started  a  new  organisation,  the  "Democratic 
Association,"  which  is  described  as  "an  association  with  aims 
almost  entirely  socialistic  and  revolutionary."  This  association 
also  spread  amongst  the  Irish  workers  in  Great  Britain,  and  had 
the  cordial  support  and  endorsement  of  Feargus  O'Connor,  who 
saw  in  it  the  realisation  of  his  long-hoped  for  dream  of  a  com- 
mon programme  uniting  the  democracies  of  Ireland  and  Great 
Britain.  But  the  era  of  revolution  was  past  for  that  generation 
in  both  countries,  and  it  was  too  late  for  the  working  class  revolu- 
tionists to  repair  the  harm  the  middle-class  doctrinaires  had  done. 
The  paper  died  in  May,  1850,  after  an  existence  of  seventeen 
months.  Among  its  contributors  was  Thomas  Clarke  Luby, 
afterwards  one  of  the  chief  writers  on  the  staff  of  the  "Irish 
People,"  organ  of  the  Fenian  Brotherhood,  a  fact  that  explains 
much  of  the  advanced  doctrine  advocated  by  that  journal.  An- 

123 


124  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

other  of  the  staff  of  the  "Irishman"  in  those  days  was  Joseph 
Brennan,  whom  we  have  already  quoted  as  writing  in  the  "Irish 
Tribune."  Brennan  finally  emigrated  to  America  and  contributed 
largely  to  the  pages  of  the  New  Orleans  "Delta,"  many  of  his 
poems  in  that  journal  showing  the  effects  of  his  early  association 
with  the  currents  of  social-revolutionary  thought  in  Ireland. 

Before  leaving  this  period  a  few  words  should  be  said  of 
the  impress  left  upon  the  labour  movement  of  Great  Britain  by 
the  working  class  Irish  exiles.  An  English  writer,  H.  S.  Fox- 
well,  has  said  that  "Socialist  propagandism  has  been  mainly  car- 
ried on  by  men  of  Celtic  or  Semitic  blood,"  and,  however  true 
that  may  be,  as  a  general  statement,  it  is  at  least  certain  that 
to  the  men  of  Celtic  blood  the  English-speaking  countries  are 
indebted  for  the  greater  part  of  the  early  propaganda  of  the 
Socialist  conception  of  society.  We  have  already  referred  to 
Feargus  O'Connor;  another  Irishman  who  carved  his  name  deep 
on  the  early  structures  of  the  labour  and  socialist  movement  in 
England  as  an  author  and  Chartist  leader  was  James  BronterrC 
O'Brien.  Among  his  best  known  works  are: — "Rise,  Progress 
and  Phases  of  Human  Slavery :  How  it  came  into  the  world,  and 
how  it  may  be  made  to  go  out  of  it,"  published  in  1830 ;  "Address 
to  the  Oppressed  and  Mystified  People  of  Great  Britain,"  1851 ; 
"European  Letters;"  and  the  pages  of  the  "National  Reformer," 
which  he  founded  in  1837.  At  first  an  advocate  of  physical  force, 
he  in  his  later  days  gave  himself  up  almost  exclusively  to  the 
development  of  a  system  of  land  banks,  in  which  he  believed  he 
had  found  a  way  to  circumvent  the  political  and  military  power 
of  the  capitalist  class.  Bronterre  O'Brien  is  stated  to  have  been 
the  first  to  coin  in  English  the  distinctive  title  of  "social  demo- 
crat," as  an  appellation  for  the  adherents  of  the  new  order. 

An  earlier  Irish  apostle  of  the  Socialist  movement  of  the 
working  class,  John  Doherty,  is  much  less  known  to  the  present 
generation  than  O'Brien,  yet  his  methods  bore  more  of  the  marks 
of  constructive  revolutionary  statesmanship,  and  his  message  was 
equally  clear.  He  appears  to  have  been  an  almost  dominant  figure 
in  the  labour  movement  of  England  and  Ireland  between  the 
years  1830  and  1840,  spent  little  time  in  the  development  of 
Socialist  theories,  but  devoted  all  his  energies  to  organizing  the 
working  class  and  teaching  it  to  act  on  its  own  initiative.  He 
was  General  Secretary  of  the  "Federation  of  Spinning  Societies," 
which  aimed  to  unite  all  the  textile  industries  in  one  great  na- 
tional industrial  union  and  was  widespread  throughout  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland;  he  founded  a  "National  Association  for  the 


LABOUR  IN   IRISH   HISTORY  125 

Protection  of  Labour,"  which  directed  its  efforts  towards  build- 
ing up  a  union  of  the  working  class  effective  alike  for  economic 
and  political  ends,  and  reached  to  100,000  members,  the  Belfast 
trades  applying  in  a  body  for  affiliation;  he  founded  and  edited 
a  paper,  "The  Voice  of  the  People,"  in  1831,  which,  although 
sevenpence  per  copy,  attained  to  a  circulation  of  30,000,  and  is 
described  as  "giving  great  attention  to  Radical  politics,  and  the 
progress  of  revolution  on  the  Continent."  In  his  "History  of 
Trades  Unionism,"  Sidney  Webb  quotes  Francis  Place — the  best 
informed  man  in  the  labour  movement  in  England  of  his  day — 
as  declaring  that  during  the  English  Reform  Bill  crisis  in  1832 
Doherty,  instead  of  being  led  astray,  as  many  labour  leaders  were, 
to  rally  to  the  side  of  the  middle  class  reformers,  was  "advising 
the  working  class  to  use  the  occasion  for  a  Social  Revolution." 
This  was  indeed  the  keynote  of  Doherty's  message:  whatever 
was  to  be  done  was  to  be  done  by  the  working  class.  He  is 
summed  up  as  of  "wide  information,  great  natural  shrewdness, 
and  far-reaching  aims."  Was  born  in  Larne  in  1799. 

Another  Doherty,  Hugh,  attained  to  some  prominence  in 
Socialistic  circles  in  England,  and  we  find  him  in  1841  in  London 
editing  a  Socialist  paper,  "The  Phalanx,"  which  devoted  itself  to 
the  propagation  of  the  views  of  the  French  Socialist,  Fourier. 
It  had  little  influence  on  the  labour  movement  owing  to  its  ex- 
tremely doctrinaire  attitude,  but  appears  to  have  had  circulation 
and  correspondents  in  the  United  States.  It  was  one  of  the  first 
journals  to  be  set  up  by  a  type-setting  machine,  and  one  of  its 
numbers  contains  a  minute  description  of  the  machine,  which 
forms  curious  reading  to-day. 

In  general  the  effect  upon  the  English  labour  movement  of 
the  great  influx  of  Irish  workers  seems  to  us  to  have  been  bene- 
ficial. It  is  true  that  their  competition  for  employment  had  at 
first  a  seriously  evil  effect  upon  wages,  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  study  of  the  fugitive  literature  of  the  movement  of  that  time 
shows  that  the  working  class  Irish  exiles  were  present  and  active 
in  the  ranks  of  militant  labour  in  numbers  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  ratio  they  bore  to  the  population  at  large.  And  always 
they  were  the  advanced,  the  least  compromising,  the  most  irrecon- 
cilable element  in  the  movement.  Of  course  the  Socialist  sec- 
tarians and  philosophers  did  not  love  the  Irish — Charles  Kingsley, 
that  curious  combination  of  Prelate,  Socialist,  Chauvinist  and 
Virulent  Bigot,  can  scarcely  remain  within  the  bounds  of  decent 
language  when  he  brings  an  Irishman  into  the  thread  of  his 
narratives — but  the  aversion  was  born  out  of  their  fear  of  the 


126  LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY 

Irish  workers'  impatience  of  compromise  and  eagerness  for  action. 
And  hence  the  very  qualities  which  endeared  the  Irish  worker  to 
the  earnest  rebel  against  capitalist  iniquity  estranged  him  from 
the  affections  of  those  whose  social  position  enabled  them  to  be- 
come the  historians  of  his  movements. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  WORKING  CLASS:  THE  INHERITORS  OF  THE  IRISH  IDEALS  OF 
THE  PAST — THE  REPOSITORY  OF  THE  HOPES  OF  THE  FUTURE 

"Is  a  Christian  to  starve,  to  submit,  to  bow  down 

As  at  some  high  consecrated  behest, 
Hugging  close  the  old  maxims,  that  'Weakness  is  strength,' 

And  'Whatsoever  is  is  the  best'? 
O,  texts  of  debasement !  O  creed  of  deep  shame ! 

O,  Gospel  of  infamy  treble, 

Who  strikes  when  he's  struck,  and  takes  when  he  starves, 
In  the  eyes  of  the  Lord  is  no  rebel." 

—7.  F.  O'Donnell. 

THIS  book  does  not  aspire  to  be  a  history  of  labour  in  Ireland; 
it  is  rather  a  record  of  labour  in  Irish  History.  For  that  reason 
the  plan  of  the  book  has  precluded  any  attempt  to  deal  in  detail 
with  the  growth,  development,  or  decay  of  industry  in  Ireland, 
except  as  it  affected  our  general  argument.  That  argument  called 
for  an  explanation  of  the  position  of  labour  in  the  great  epochs 
of  our  modern  history,  and  with  the  attitude  of  Irish  leaders 
toward  the  hopes,  aspirations,  and  necessities  of  those  who  live 
by  labour.  Occasionally,  as  when  analysing  the  "prosperity"  of 
Grattan's  Parliament,  and  the  decay  of  Irish  trade  following  the 
Legislative  Union  in  1800,  we  have  been  constrained  to  examine 
the  fundamental  causes  which  make  for  the  progress,  industrially 
or  commercially,  of  some  nations  and  the  retrogression  of  others. 
For  this  apparent  digression  no  apology  is  made,  and  none  is 
called  for;  it  was  impossible  to  present  our  readers  with  a  clear 
idea  of  the  historical  position  of  labour  at  any  given  moment  with- 
out explaining  the  economic  and  political  causes  which  contributed 
to  make  possible  or  necessary  its  attitude.  For  the  same  reason  it 
has  been  necessary  sometimes  to  retrace  our  footsteps  over  some 
period  already  covered  in  order  to  draw  attention  to  a  phase  of 
the  subject,  the  introduction  of  which  in  the  previous  narrative 

127 


128  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

would  have  marred  the  view  of  the  question  then  under  exam- 
ination. Thus  the  origin  of  trade  unionism  in  Ireland  has  not 
been  dealt  with,  although  in  the  course  of  our  study  we  have 
shown  that  the  Irish  trades  were  well  organised.  Nor  are  we 
now  prepared  to  enter  upon  that  subject.  Perhaps  at  some  more 
propitious  moment  we  will  be  enabled  to  examine  the  materials 
bearing  upon  the  matter,  and  trace  the  growth  of  the  institution 
in  Ireland.  Sufficient  for  the  present  to  state  that  Trades  Guilds 
existed  in  Ireland  as  upon  the  Continent  and  England,  during 
Roman  Catholic,  pre-Reformation  days;  that  after  the  Reforma- 
tion those  Trade  Guilds  became  exclusively  Protestant,  and  even 
anti-Catholic,  within  the  English  Pale;  that  they  continued  to 
refuse  admission  to  Catholics  even  after  the  passage  of  the 
Catholic  Emancipation  Act,  and  that  these  old  Trade  Guilds  were 
formally  abolished  by  law  in  1840.  But  the  Catholic  and  Protes- 
tant workmen  who  were  excluded  from  guild  membership  (Epis- 
copalians only  being  eligible)  did  nevertheless  organise  themselves, 
and  it  was  their  trade  unions  which  dominated  the  labour  world 
to  the  wrath  of  the  capitalists  and  landlords,  and  the  chagrin  of 
the  Governments.  One  remarkable  and  instructive  feature  of 
their  organisation  in  town  and  country  was  the  circumstance  that 
every  attempt  at  political  rebellion  in  Ireland  was  always  pre- 
ceded by  a  remarkable  development  of  unrest,  discontent,  and 
class  consciousness  amongst  their  members,  demonstrating  clearly 
that  to  the  mind  of  the  thoughtful  Irish  worker  political  and 
social  subjection  were  very  nearly  related.  In  the  "Dublin 
Chronicle,"  January  28,  1792,  there  is  a  record  of  a  great  strike 
of  the  journeymen  tailors  of  Dublin,  in  the  course  of  which,  it  is 
stated,  armed  tailors  went  to  the  workrooms  of  Messrs.  Miller, 
Ross  Lane,  Leet,  Merchant's  Quay,  Walsh,  Castle  Street,  and 
Ward,  Cope  Street,  attacked  certain  scabs  who  were  working 
there,  cut  off  the  hands  of  two,  and  threw  others  in  the  river. 
In  another  and  later  issue  of  the  same  journal  there  is  a  record 
of  how  a  few  coal  porters  (dock  labourers)  were  seized  by  His 
Majesty's  press-gang  with  the  intention  of  compelling  them  to 
serve  in  the  navy,  and  how  the  organised  quay  labourers,  on 
hearing  of  it,  summoned  their  members,  and  marching  upon  the 
guard-house  where  the  men  were  detained,  attacked  it,  defeated 
the  guard  and  released  their  comrades.  In  the  same  paper,  Janu- 
ary 3,  1793,  there  is  a  letter  from  a  gentleman  resident  at  Carrick- 
macross,  Co.  Monaghan,  describing  how  an  armed  party  of  De- 
fenders paraded  through  that  town  on  its  way  to  Ardee,  how  the 
army  was  brought  out  to  attack  them  and  a  number  were  killed. 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  129 

On  January  24,  1793,  another  correspondent  tells  how  a  battle 
took  place  between  Bailieborough  and  Kingscourt,  Co.  Cavan, 
"between  those  deluded  persons  styling  themselves  Defenders  and 
a  part  of  the  army,"  when  eighteen  labourers  were  killed,  five 
badly  wounded,  and  thirty  taken  prisoners  "and  lodged  in  Cavan 
gaol."  There  is  also  on  July  23,  1793,  the  following  account  of 
a  battle  at  Limerick : — 

"Last  night  we  hear  that  an  express  arrived  from  Limerick 
with  the  following  intelligence — that  on  Saturday  night  a  mob 
of  7  or  8,000  attacked  that  city  and  attempted  to  burn  it;  that 
the  army,  militia  and  citizens  were  obliged  to  join  to  repel  these 
daring  offenders,  and  to  bring  the  artillery  into  the  streets,  and 
that  after  a  severe  and  obstinate  resistance  the  insurgents  were 
dispersed  with  a  loss  of  140  killed  and  several  wounded."  Simi- 
lar battles  between  the  peasantry  and  the  soldiery,  aided  by  the 
local  landlords,  occurred  in  the  county  Wexford. 

In  the  report  of  the  Secret  Committee  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
1793,  speaking  of  the  Defenders  (who,  as  we  have  stated  before, 
were  the  organised  labourers  striving  to  better  their  condition  by 
the  only  means  open  to  them),  it  says  "they  first  appeared  in  the 
county  Louth,"  "soon  spread  through  the  counties  of  Meath, 
Cavan,  Monaghan  and  parts  adjacent,"  and  "their  measures  ap- 
pear to  have  been  concerted  and  conducted  with  the  utmost 
secrecy  and  a  degree  of  regularity  and  system  not  usual  to  people 
in  such  mean  condition,  and  as  if  directed  by  men  of  a  superior 
rank." 

All  this,  be  it  noted,  was  on  the  eve  of  the  revolutionary 
struggle  of  1798,  and  shows  how  the  class  struggles  of  the  Irish 
workers  formed  the  preparatory  school  for  the  insurrectionary 
effort. 

The  long  drawn  out  struggle  of  the  fight  against  tithes  and 
the  militant  spirit  of  the  Irish  trades  and  Ribbonmen  we  have 
already  spoken  of  as  providing  the  revolutionary  material  for 
1848,  which  Smith  O'Brien  and  his  followers  were  unfit  to  use. 
For  the  next  revolutionary  period,  that  known  as  the  Fenian  Con- 
spiracy, the  same  coincidence  of  militant  class  feeling  and  revo- 
lutionary nationalism  is  deeply  marked.  Indeed,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  the  real  nationalists  of  Ireland,  the  Separatists,  have  always 
been  men  of  broad  human  sympathies  and  intense  democracy,  for 
it  has  ever  been  in  the  heart  of  the  working  class  at  home  they 
found  their  most  loyal  support,  and  in  the  working  class  abroad 
their  most  resolute  defenders. 

The  Fenian  Brotherhood  was  established  in  1857,  according 


130 

to  the  statement  of  Mr.  John  O'Mahony,  one  of  its  two  chiefs 
James    Stephens   being   the    other.      Of    O 'Mahony    Mr    John 
O'Leary  says   in  his  "Recollections  of  Fenians  and  Fenianism, 
that  he  was  an  advanced  democrat  of  Socialistic  opinions    and 
W   A   O'Connor,  in  his  "History  of  the  Irish  People,    declares 
that  both  O'Mahony  and  Stephens  had  entered  into  the  secret 
societies  of  France,  O'Mahony  "from  mere  sympathy."    A  fur 
ther  confirmation  of  this  view  of  the  character  of  the  men 
sponsible  for  the  Fenian  Society  is  found  in  a  passage  in  a  journs 
established  in  the  interests  of  Fenianism,  and  published  m  London 
after  the  suppression  of  the  organ  of  the  Brotherhood,  the    Irish 
People  "  in  Dublin,  in  1865.    This  journal,  the  "Flag  of  Ireland, 
quoting  from  the  Paris  correspondent  of  the  "Irishman,"  says 
on  October  3,  1868  :— 

"It  took  its  rise  in  the  Latin  Quarter  of  this  city  when  John 
O'Mahony,  Michael  Doheny,  and  James  Stephens  were  here  in 
exile  after  '48. 

"This  was  the  triumvirate  from  whose  plotting  brains  the 
idea  of  Fenianism  sprung.  O'Mahony,  deep  in  lore  of  Ireland 
and  loving  her  traditions,  found  its  name  for  the  new  society; 
Doheny,  with  his  dogged,  acute  and  vigorous  character,  stamped 
it  with  much  of  the  force  that  helped  it  into  life,  but  to  Stephens 
is  due  the  direction  it  took  in  line  of  sympathy  with  the  move- 
ments of  the  Revolution  on  the  Continent.  He  saw  that  the  Irish 
question  was  no  longer  a  question  of  religion ;  his  common  sense 
was  too  large  to  permit  him  to  consider  it  a  question  of  race 
even;  he  felt  it  was  the  old  struggle  which  agitated  France  at 
the  end  of  last  century,  transferred  to  new  ground ;  the  opposing 
forces  were  the  same,  with  this  difference,  that  in  Ireland  the 
people  had  not  the  consolation  in  all  cases  of  saluting  their  tyrants 
as  their  countrymen." 

The  circumstance  that  the  general  chosen  by  Stephens  to  be 
the  Commander-in-chief  of  the  Irish  Republican  army  was  no 
less  a  character  than  General  Cluseret,  afterwards  Commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Federals  during  the  Commune  of  Paris,  says 
more  for  the  principles  of  the  men  who  were  the  brains  of  the 
Fenian  movement  than  any  testimony  of  subordinates. 

Coincident  with  the  inception  of  Fenianism,  1857,  com- 
menced in  Ireland  a  determined  labour  agitation  which  culmi- 
nated in  a  vigorous  movement  amongst  the  baker  journeymen 
against  night  labour  and  in  favour  of  a  reduction  of  the  working 
hours.  Great  meetings  were  held  all  over  the  country  during  the 
years  1858-60,  in  which  the  rights  of  labour  were  most  vehemently 


131 

asserted  and  the  tyranny  of  the  Irish  employers  exposed  and 
denounced.  In  Wexford,  Kilkenny,  Clonmel  and  Water  ford 
night-work  was  abolished  and  day  labour  established.  The  move- 
ment was  considered  so  serious  that  a  Parliamentary  Committee 
sat  to  investigate  it;  from  its  report,  as  quoted  by  Karl  Mam 
in  his  great  work  on  "Capital,"  we  take  the  following  excerpts:— 

"In  Limerick,  where  the  grievances  of  the  journeymen  are 
demonstrated  to  be  excessive,  the  movement  has  been  defeated 
by  the  opposition  of  the  master  bakers,  the  miller  bakers  being 
the  greatest  opponents.  The  example  of  Limerick  led  to  a  retro- 
gression in  Ennis  and  Tipperary.  In  Cork,  where  the  strongest 
possible  demonstration  of  feeling  took  place,  the  masters  by  exer- 
cising their  power  of  turning  the  men  out  of  employment,  have 
defeated  the  movement.  In  Dublin  the  master  bakers  have 
offered  the  most  determined  opposition  to  the  movement,  and  by 
discountenancing  as  much  as  possible  the  journeymen  promoting 
it,  have  succeeded  in  leading  the  men  into  acquiescence  in  Sunday 
work  and  night  work,  contrary  to  the  convictions  of  the  men. 

"The  Committee  believe  that  the  hours  of  labour  are  limited 
by  natural  laws  which  cannot  be  violated  with  impunity.  That 
for  master  bakers  to  induce  their  workmen  by  the  fear  of  losing 
employment,  to  violate  their  religious  convictions  and  their  better 
feelings,  to  disobey  the  laws  of  the  land,  and  to  disregard  publk 
opinion,  is  calculated  to  provoke  ill-feeling  between  workmen  and 
masters — and  affords  an  example  dangerous  to  religion,  morality 
and  social  order.  The  Committee  believe  that  any  constant  work 
beyond  twelve  hours  a  day  encroaches  on  the  domestic  and  pri- 
vate life  of  the  working  man,  and  so  leads  to  disastrous  moral 
results,  interfering  with  each  man's  home,  and  the  discharge  of 
his  family  duties  as  a  son,  a  brother,  a  husband,  a  father.  That 
work  beyond  twelve  hours  has  a  tendency  to  undermine  the  health 
of  the  working  man,  and  so  leads  to  premature  old  age  and 
death,  to  the  great  injury  of  families  of  working  men  thus  de- 
prived of  the  care  and  support  of  the  head  of  the  family  when 
most  required." 

The  reader  will  observe  that  the  cities  where  this  movement 
was  strongest,  where  the  workers  had  made  the  strongest  fight 
and  class  feeling  was  highest  were  the  places  where  Fenianism 
developed  the  most;  it  is  a  matter  of  historical  record  that 
Dublin,  Cork,  Wexford,  Clonmel,  Kilkenny,  Wa-erford  and 
Ennis  and  their  respective  counties  were  the  most  responsive  to 
the  message  of  Fenianism.  Richard  Pigott,  who,  before  he  suc- 
cumbed to  the  influence  of  the  gold  offered  by  the  London 


1J2 


"Times,"  had  a  long  and  useful  career  as  responsible  figurehead 
for  advanced  journals  in  Ireland,  and  who  in  that  capacity  ac- 
quired a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  men  and  movements  for 
whom  he  was  sponsor,  gives  in  his  "Recollections  of  an  Irish 
Journalist"  this  testimony  as  to  the  personnel  of  Fenianism,  a 
testimony,  it  will  be  observed,  fully  bearing  out  our  analysis  of 
the  relation  between  the  revolutionary  movement  and  the  work- 
ing class : — 

"It  is  notorious  that  Fenianism  was  regarded  with  uncon- 
cealed aversion,  not  to  say  deadly  hatred,  by  not  merely  the  land- 
lords and  the  ruling  class,  but  by  the  Catholic  clergy,  the  middle 
class  Catholics,  and  the  great  majority  of  the  farming  classes. 
ft  was  in  fact  only  amongst  the  youngest  and  most  intelligent 
if  the  labouring  class,  of  the  young  men  of  the  large  towns  and 
cities  engaged  in  the  humbler  walks  of  mercantile  life,  of  the 
irtisan  and  working  classes  that  it  found  favour." 

Karl  Marx  quotes  from  "Reports  of  the  Poor  Law  In- 
.>pectors  on  the  Wages  of  Agricultural  Labourers  in  Dublin, 
1870,"  to  show  that  between  the  years  1849  and  1869,  while 
wages  in  Ireland  had  risen  fifty  or  sixty  per  cent.,  the  prices  of 
all  necessaries  had  more  than  doubled.  He  gives  the  following 
extract  from  the  official  accounts  of  an  Irish  workhouse : — 

AVERAGE  WEEKLY  COST  PER  HEAD 


Year  ended 

Provisions  and 
Necessaries 

Clothing            Total 

29th  Sept.,  1849 
1869 

Is.  3y4d. 

2s.  7y4d. 

3d. 

6d. 

Is.  6^d. 
3s.  l#d. 

These  facts  demonstrate  that  in  the  period  during  which  the 
Kenian  movement  obtained  its  hold  upon  the  Irish  masses  in  the 
cities  the  workers  were  engaged  in  fierce  struggles  with  their 
employers,  and  the  price  of  all  necessities  of  life  had  increased 
twofold — two  causes  sufficient  to  produce  revolutionary  ferment 
*ven  in  a  country  without  the  historical  justification  for  revolu- 
tion possessed  by  Ireland.  Great  Britain  was  also  in  the  throes 
of  a  fierce  agitation  as  a  result  of  the  terrible  suffering  of  the 
working  class  resultant  from  the  industrial  crisis  of  1866-7.  The 
'Morning  Star,"  a  London  paper,  stated  that  in  six  districts  of 
ixmdon  15,000  workmen  were  in  a  state  of  destitution  with  their 
families;  ''Reynold's  Newspaper,"  on  January  20,  1867,  quoted 


LABOUR   IN   IRISH   HISTORY  133 

from  a  large  poster,  which  it  says  was  placarded  all  over  London, 
the  words  "Fat  Oxen,  Starving  Men — the  fat  oxen  from  their 
palaces  of  glass  have  gone  to  feed  the  rich  in  their  luxurious 
abode,  while  the  starving  poor  are  left  to  rot  and  die  in  their 
wretched  dens,"  and  commented  that  "this  reminds  one  of  the 
secret  revolutionary  associations  which  prepared  the  French 
people  for  the  events  of  1789.  At  this  moment,  while  English 
workmen  with  their  wives  and  children  are  dying  of  cold  and 
hunger,  there  are  millions  of  English  gold — the  produce  of  Eng- 
lish labour — being  invested  in  Russian,  Spanish,  Italian  and  other 
foreign  enterprises."  And  the  London  "Standard"  of  April  5, 
1866,  stated :  "A  frightful  spectacle  was  to  be  seen  yesterday 
in  one  part  of  the  metropolis.  Although  the  unemployed  thou- 
sands of  the  East  End  did  not  parade  with  their  black  flags 
en  masse  the  human  torrent  was  imposing  enough.  Let  us  re- 
member what  these  people  suffer.  They  are  dying  of  hunger. 
That  is  the  simple  and  terrible  fact.  There  are  40,000  ot  them. 
In  our  presence,  in  one  quarter  of  this  wonderful  metropolis, 
are  packed — next  door  +o  the  most  enormous  accumulation  of 
wealth  the  world  ever  >aw — cheek  by  jowl  with  this  are  40,000 
helpless,  starving  people.  These  thousands  are  now  breaking  in 
upon  the  other  quarters." 

This  state  of  hunger  and  revolt  in  Great  Britain  offers  an 
explanation  of  the  curious  phenomenon  mentioned  by  A.  M. 
Sullivan  in  "New  Ireland,"  that  the  Home  Rule  or  constitutional 
journals  held  their  own  easily  in  Ireland  itself  against  the  "Irish 
People,"  but  in  Great  Britain  the  Fenian  journal  simply  swept 
the  field  clear  of  its  Irish  competitors.  The  Irish  working  class 
exiles  in  Great  Britain  saw  that  the  nationalist  aspirations  of 
their  race  pointed  to  the  same  conclusion,  called  for  the  same 
action,  as  the  material  interests  of  their  class — viz.,  the  complete 
overthrow  of  the  capitalist  government  and  the  national  and  social 
tyranny  upon  which  it  rested.  Any  thoughtful  reader  of  the 
poems  of  J.  F.  O'Donnell — such,  for  instance,  as  "An  Artisan's 
Garret,"  depicting  in  words  that  burn  the  state  of  mind  of  an 
unemployed  Fenian  artisan  of  Dublin  beside  the  bedside  of  his 
wife  dying  of  hunger — or  the  sweetly  pleading  poetry  of  J.  K, 
Casey  (Leo)  cannot  wonder  at  the  warm  reception  journals  con- 
taining such  teaching  met  in  Great  Britain  amidst  the  men  and 
women  of  Irish  race  and  of  a  subject  class. 

Just  as  '98  was  an  Irish  expression  of  the  tendencies  em- 
bodied in  the  first  French  Revolution,  as  '48  throbbed  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  democratic  and  social  upheavals  on  the  Continent 


134  LABOUR   IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

of  Europe  and  England,  so  Fenianism  was  a  responsive  throb 
in  the  Irish  heart  to  those  pulsations  in  the  heart  of  the  European 
working  class  which  elsewhere  produced  the  International  Work- 
ing Men's  Association.  Branches  of  that  Association  flourished 
in  Dublin  and  Cork  until  after  the  Paris  Commune,  and  it  is  an 
interesting  study  to  trace  the  analogy  between  the  course  of  de- 
velopment of  the  Socialist  movement  of  Europe  after  the  Com- 
mune and  that  of  the  Irish  revolutionary  cause  after  the  failure 
of  '67.  In  both  cases  we  witness  the  abandonment  of  insurrec- 
tionism  and  the  initiation  of  a  struggle  in  which  the  revolting 
class,  while  aiming  at  revolution,  consistently  refuse  the  arbitra- 
ment of  an  armed  struggle.  When  the  revolutionary  nationalists 
threw  in  their  lot  with  the  Irish  Land  League,  and  made  the  land 
struggle  the  basis  of  their  warfare,  they  were  not  only  placing 
themselves  in  touch  once  more  with  those  inexhaustible  quarries 
of  material  interests  from  which  all  the  great  Irish  statesmen 
from  St.  Laurence  O'Toole  to  Wolfe  Tone  drew  the  stones  upon 
which  they  built  their  edifice  of  a  militant  patriotic  Irish  organiza- 
tion, but  they  were  also,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  placing 
themselves  in  accord  with  the  principles  which  underlie  and 
inspire  the  modern  movement  of  labour.  This  fact  was  recog- 
nised at  the  time  by  most  dispassionate  onlookers.  Thus  in  a 
rather  amusing  book  published  in  France  in  1887,  under  the  title 
of  "Chez  Paddy,"  Englished  as  "Paddy  at  Home,"  the  author, 
a  French  aristocrat,  Baron  E.  de  Mandat-Crancey,  giving  an 
account  of  a  tour  in  Ireland  in  1886,  in  the  course  of  which 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  many  of  the  Land  League  leaders, 
as  well  as  visited  at  the  mansions  of  a  number  of  the  landlords, 
makes  this  comment: — 

"For  in  fact,  however  they  may  try  to  dissimulate  it,  the 
Irish  claims,  if  they  do  not  yet  amount  to  Communism  as  their 
avowed  object — and  they  may  still  retain  a  few  illusions  upon 
that  point — still  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  methods  employed 
by  the  Land  League  would  not  be  disowned  by  the  most  ad- 
vanced Communists." 

It  was  a  recognition  of  this  fact  which  induced  the  "Irish 
World,"  the  chief  advocate  of  the  Land  League  in  America,  to 
carry  the  sub-title  of  "American  Industrial  Liberator,"  and  to 
be  the  mouthpiece  of  the  nascent  labour  movement  of  those  days, 
as  it  was  also  a  recognition  of  this  fact  which  prompted  the  Irish 
middle  class  leaders  to  abandon  the  land  fight,  and  to  lend  their 
energies  to  an  attempt  to  focus  the  whole  interest  of  Ireland 
upon  a  Parliamentary  struggle  as  soon  as  ever  a  temporary  set- 


LABOUR   IN    IRISH   HISTORY  135 

back  gave  them  an  opportunity  to  counsel  a  change  of  tactics. 

They  feared  to  call  into  existence  a  spirit  of  inquiry  into 
the  rights  of  property  which  wculd  not  halt  at  a  negation  of  the 
sacredness  of  fortunes  founded  upon  rent,  but  might  also  chal- 
lenge the  rightfulness  of  fortunes  drawn  from  profit  and  interest. 
They  instinctively  realized  that  such  an  inquiry  would  reveal  that 
there  was  no  fundamental  difference  between  such  fortunes ;  that 
they  were  made,  not  from  land  in  the  one  case  nor  workshops 
in  the  other,  but  from  the  social  subjection  of  the  non-possessing 
class,  compelled  to  toil  as  tenants  on  the  land  or  as  employees 
in  workshop  or  factory. 

For  the  same  reason  the  Land  League  (which  was  founded 
in  1879  at  Irishtown,  Co.  Mayo,  at  a  meeting  held  to  denounce 
the  exactions  of  a  certain  priest  in  his  capacity  as  a  rackrenting 
landlord)  had  had  at  the  outset  to  make  headway  in  Ireland 
against  the  opposition  of  all  the  official  Home  Rule  Press,  and 
in  Great  Britain  amongst  the  Irish  exiles  to  depend  entirely  upon 
the  championship  of  poor  labourers  and  English  and  Scottish 
Socialists.  In  fact  those  latter  were,  for  years,  the  principal 
exponents  and  interpreters  of  Land  League  principles  to  the 
British  masses,  and  they  performed  their  task  unflinchingly  at 
a  time  when  the  "respectable"  moneyed  men  of  the  Irish  com- 
munities in  Great  Britain  cowered  in  dread  of  the  displeasure 
of  their  wealthy  British  neighbours. 

Afterwards,  when  the  rising  tide  of  victorious  revolt  in 
Ireland  compelled  the  Liberal  Party  to  give  a  half-hearted  ac- 
quiescence to  the  demands  of  the  Irish  peasantry;  and  the  Home 
Rule-Liberal  alliance  was  consummated,  the  Irish  business  men 
in  Great  Britain  came  to  the  front  and  succeeded  in  worming 
themselves  into  all  the  places  of  trust  and  leadership  in  the  Irish 
organisations.  One  of  the  first  and  most  bitter  fruits  of  that 
alliance  was  the  use  of  the  Irish  vote  against  the  candidates  of 
the  Socialist  and  Labour  Parties.  Despite  the  horrified  and  ener- 
getic protests  of  such  men  as  Michael  Davitt.  the  solid  phalanx 
of  Irish  voters  was  again  and  again  hurled  against  the  men  who 
had  fought  and  endured  suffering,  ostracism  and  abuse  for  Ireland 
at  a  time  when  the  Liberal  Government  was  packing  Irish  jails 
with  unconvicted  Irish  men  and  women.  In  so  manoeuvring  to 
wean  the  Irish  masses  in  Great  Britain  away  from  their  old 
friends,  the  Socialist  and  Labour  Clubs,  and  to  throw  them  into 
the  arms  of  their  old  enemies,  the  Liberal  capitalists,  the  Irish 
bourgeois  politicians  were  very  astutely  following  their  class 
interests,  even  while  they  cloaked  their  action  under  the  name  of 


136  LABOUR    IN    IRISH    HISTORY 

patriotism.  Obviously  a  union  of  Irish  patriotism  and  Socialist 
activity,  if  furthered  and  endorsed  by  Irish  organisations  in  Great 
Britain,  could  not  long  be  kept  out  of,  or  if  introduced  could  not 
well  be  fought  in,  Ireland.  Hence  their  frantic  and  illogical 
endeavour  to  twist  and  distort  the  significance  of  Irish  history", 
and  to  put  the  question  of  property,  its  ownership  and  develop- 
ment, out  of  order  in  all  discussions  on  Irish  nationality. 

But  that  question  so  dreaded  rises  again ;  it  will  not  down, 
and  cannot  be  suppressed.  The  partial  success  of  the  Land 
League  has  effected  a  change  in  Ireland,  the  portent  of  which 
but  few  realise.  Stated  briefly,  it  means  that  the  recent  Land 
Acts,  acting  contemporaneously  with  the  development  of  trans- 
Atlantic  traffic,  are  converting  Ireland  from  a  country  governed 
according  to  the  conception  of  feudalism  into  a  country  shaping 
itself  after  capitalistic  laws  of  trade.  To-day  the  competition 
of  the  trust-owned  farms  of  the  United  States  and  the  Argentine 
Republic  is  a  more  deadly  enemy  to  the  Irish  agriculturist  than 
the  lingering  remnants  of  landlordism  or  the  bureaucratic  official- 
ism of  the  British  Empire.  Capitalism  is  now  the  enemy,  it 
reaches  across  the  ocean ;  and  after  the  Irish  agriculturist  has 
gathered  his  harvest  and  brought  it  to  market  he  finds  that  a 
competitor  living  three  thousand  miles  away  under  a  friendly 
flag  has  undersold  and  beggared  him.  The  merely  political  heresy 
under  which  middle  class  doctrinaires  have  for  nearly  250  years 
cloaked  the  Irish  fight  for  freedom  has  thus  run  its  course.  The 
fight  made  by  the  Irish  septs  against  the  English  pale  and  all  it 
stood  for;  the  struggle  of  the  peasants  and  labourers  of  the  18th 
and  19th  centuries ;  the  great  social  struggle  of  all  the  ages  will 
again  arise  and  re-shape  itself  in  Ireland  to  suit  the  new  condi- 
tions. That  war  which  the  Land  League -fought,  and  then  aban- 
doned before  it  was  either  lost  or  won,  will  be  taken  up  by  the 
Irish  toilers  on  a  broader  field  with  sharper  weapons,  and  a  more 
comprehensive  knowledge  of  all  the  essentials  of  permanent  vic- 
tory. As  the  Irish  septs  of  the  past  were  accounted  Irish  or 
English  according  as  they  rejected  or  accepted  the  native  or 
foreign  social  order,  as  they  measured  their  oppression  or  free- 
dom by  their  loss  or  recovery  of  the  collective  ownership  of  their 
lands,  so  the  Irish  toilers  from  henceforward  will  base  their  fight 
for  freedom  not  upon  the  winning  or  losing  the  right  to  talk  in 
an  Irish  Parliament,  but  upon  their  progress  towards  the  mastery 
of  those  factories,  workshops  and  farms  upon  which  a  people's 
bread  and  liberties  depend. 

As  we  have  again  and  again  pointed  out,  the  Irish  question 


137 

is  a  social  question,  the  whole  age-long  fight  of  the  Irish  people 
against  their  oppressors  resolves  itself  in  the  last  analysis  into  a 
fight  for  the  mastery  of  the  means  of  life,  the  sources  of  produc- 
tion, in  Ireland.  Who  would  own  and  control  the  land?  The 
people  or  the  invaders ;  and  if  the  invaders,  which  set  of  them — 
the  most  recent  swarm  of  land  thieves,  or  the  sons  of  the  thieves 
of  a  former  generation?  These  were  the  bottom  questions  of 
Irish  politics,  and  all  other  questions  were  valued  or  deprecated 
in  the  proportion  to  which  they  contributed  to  serve  the  interests 
of  some  of  the  factions  who  had  already  taken  their  stand  in  this 
fight  around  property  interests.  Without  this  key  to  the  meaning 
of  events,  this  clue  to  unravel  the  actions  of  "great  men,"  Irish 
history  is  but  a  welter  of  unrelated  facts,  a  hopeless  chaos  of 
sporadic  outbreaks,  treacheries,  intrigues,  massacres,  murders, 
and  purposeless  warfare.  With  this  key  all  things  become  under 
standable  and  traceable  to  their  primary  origin ;  without  this  key 
the  lost  opportunities  of  Ireland  seem  such  as  to  bring  a  blush  to 
the  cheek  of  the  Irish  worker;  with  this  key  Irish  history  is  a 
lamp  to  his  feet  in  the  stormy  paths  of  to-day.  Yet  plain  as  this 
is  to  us  to-day,  it  is  undeniable  that  for  two  hundred  years  at 
least  all  Irish  political  movements  ignored  this  fact,  and  were 
conducted  by  men  who  did  not  look  below  the  political  surface. 
These  men  to  arouse  the  passions  of  the  people  invoked  the  mem- 
ory of  social  wrongs,  such  as  evictions  and  famines,  but  for  these 
wrongs  proposed  only  political  remedies,  such  as  changes  in  taxa- 
tion or  transference  of  the  seat  of  Government  (class  rule)  from 
one  country  to  another.  Hence  they  accomplished  nothing,  be- 
cause the  political  remedies  proposed  were  unrelated  to  the  social 
subjection  at  the  root  of  the  matter.  The  revolutionists  of  the 
past  were  wiser,  the  Irish  Socialists  are  wiser  to-day.  In  their 
movement  the  North  and  the  South  will  again  clasp  hands,  again 
will  it  be  demonstrated,  as  in  '98,  that  the  pressure  of  a  common 
exploitation  can  make  enthusiastic  rebels  out  of  a  Protestant 
working  class,  earnest  champions  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  out 
of  Catholics,  and  out  of  both  a  united  Social  democracy. 


IN  THIS  CRITICAL  PERIOD  OF  IRELAND'S 
HISTORY—  READ 


^n  Irish  National 
EDITED  BY  DR.  PATRICK  McCARTAN 

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In  Preparation 

The  Re-Conquest  of  Ireland 

By  JAMES  CONNOLLY 
With  an  Introduction  by  a  distinguished  Irishman 

Uniform  in  style  with  this  volume 
CLOTH  BOUND  $1.00  PAPER  COVER  50  CENTS 

THE  DONNELLY  PRESS 

164  EAST  37TH  STREET 

NEW  YORK 


Katharine  Hughes's  New  Book 

"IRELAND" 

A  Few  Quotations  From  The  Reviewers 


"The  Evening  Post" 

If,  under  the  whippings  of  our  daily  press,  one  in- 
clines to  believe  that  Ireland  at  the  moment  is  a 
schemer,  a  malingerer,  a  fattener  on  other  (and  bet- 
ter) men's  labor,  a  breaker  into  the  other  men's 
homes,  a  sitter  by  their  hearths,  a  burner  of  their 
wood,  a  Her  in  their  beds,  with  a  low  criminal  rec- 
ord out  of  the  past,  far  and  near,  this  booklet  may 
prove  either  an  annoyance  or  an  illumination.  In 
any  case  it  has  for  its  purpose  a  mainly  statistical 
presentation  of  the  case  of  Ireland  as  it  stands  on 
the  basis  of  testified  and  sometimes  sworn  fact; 
"bald,  historical  fact,  well  known  to  the  scholars 
of  every  country  in  Continental  Europe."  A  West- 
ern Canadian  of  Irish  extraction,  one  gathers  from 
the  introduction,  Miss  Hughes,  went  to  Ireland 
while  abroad  as  assistant  to  the  Agent-General  of 
Alberta  in  London,  about  1914.  There  she  was 
astonished  and  "frankly  shocked"  at  the  conditions 
she  found.  They  aroused  in  her  a  spirit  of  almost 
appalled  inquiry,  and  she  set  to  work  to  find  out 
what  the  circumstances  were  that  produced  them. 
She  apparently  worked  with  care,  inclining  to  sup- 
port her  position  and  judgments,  with  testimony 
drawn  from  English  rather  than  from  Irish  sources. 

"America" 

The  studies  of  "Ireland"  .  .  .  form  one  of  the 
best  works  that  have  yet  appeared  on  that  subject 


and  is  well  worth  reading  by  all  who  wish  to  secure 
a  clear,  logical,  and  comprehensive  knowledge  of 
the  political,  social  and  economical  conditions  of 
Ireland  today.  The  work  has  little  sentiment,  but 
abounds  in  interesting  and  convincing  facts  that  are 
taken  from  sources  that  cannot  be  questioned.  The 
booklet  deserves  a  wide  circulation. 

"The  Gaelic  American" 

A  rich  fund  of  material  about  Irish  political,  eco- 
nomic and  social  problems  is  to  be  found  in  Miss 
Katharine  Hughes's  pamphlet.  It  is  so  full  of  facts 
and  figures  and  contains  such  a  wealth  of  informa- 
tion writhin  its  eighty  pages  that  it  reminds  one  of 
those  lines  in  Goldsmith's  "Deserted  Village,"  about 
the  schoolmaster  whose  "one  small  head"  carried 
such  a  vast  amount  of  knowledge.  Rarely  does  one 
small  book  carry  all  the  facts  and  figures  and  con- 
vincing arguments  contained  in  Miss  Hughes's  "Ire- 
land." The  able  authoress  has  a  thorough  grasp  of 
the  Irish  Question  and  advances  the  claims  of  the 
Irish  people  to  liberty  and  justice  with  unusual 
directness,  completeness  and  conciseness.  Miss 
Hughes  has  the  art  of  condensation  in  a  highly  de- 
veloped degree,  and  while  her  subject  is  one  about 
which  volumes  might  be  written,  the  reader  lays 
down  the  little  book  with  the  feeling  that  nothing 
essential  to  a  proper  understanding  of  Ireland's  po- 
sition and  demands  has  been  omitted  from  its  pages. 
While  the  case  is  stated  briefly  it  is  stated  thor- 
oughly. 

Miss  Hughes  studied  Irish  conditions  during 
visits  made  to  Ireland  while  she  was  Assistant  to 
the  Agent-General  for  Alberta  in  London.  What 
she  saw  convinced  her  that  "England  is  lying  across 
the  vitals  of  Ireland"  and  that  in  addition  for  seven 
and  a  half  centuries  the  former  has  been  slowly 
disemboweling  the  latter. 

The  book  contains  a  brief  but  illuminating  survey 
of  conditions  in  Ireland  since  the  Irish  Parliament 
was  suspended  by  the  notorious  Act  of  Union  in 
1800.  It  describes  how  Ireland  was  made  to  share 


England's  debt  with  the  result  that  taxation  in- 
creased while  the  Irish  population  steadily  dimin- 
ished until  Ireland  has  today  only  about  half  the 
number  of  inhabitants  that  it  had  fifty  years 
ago.  .  .  . 

Part  of  the  book  is  devoted  to  a  fine  description 
of  the  policy  and  programme  of  Sinn  Fein,  and  the 
Sinn  Fein  constitution  is  given  in  an  appendix. 

"Ireland"  is  a  book  which  should  be  in  the  hands 
of  every  person  interested  in  the  cause  of  Irish  lib- 
erty, every  seeker  after  the  truth  about  Ireland, 
whether  he  or  she  be  Irish  or  American,  and  every 
citizen  who  believes  that  nations  should  not  be 
governed  against  the  will  of  their  inhabitants  by 
brute  force. 

"The  Monitor" 

In  a  splendid  review  of  over  two  columns  con- 
cludes with:  "Now,  whatever  Ireland  elects — but 
hold !  If  you  want  to  know  clearly,  thoroughly,  once 
for  all  what  Ireland  does  elect  then  read  the  pam- 
phlet 'Ireland1  by  Katherine  Hughes." 

"Indiana  Catholic" 

The  remarkable  book  is  from  the  Donnelly  Press, 
164  East  37th  Street,  New  York.    A  paper  cover 
edition  is  sold  for  25  cents.    The  book  is  worth  its 
weight  in  gold  to  all  who  desire  to  be  accurately  in- 
formed on  Ireland. 

"IRELAND"— 25  Cent*  A  Copy 
Published  by 

The  Donnelly  Press 

164  EAST  37th  ST. 
New  York  City 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 
405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1381 
Return  this  material  to  the  library 
from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


A     000548128     8 


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